Fairness-Oriented Resource Allocation for Energy Efficiency Optimization in Uplink OFDMA Networks

Abstract—Due to the battery-limited nature of mobile devices, improving energy efficiency (EE) of individual users and ensuring EE fairness among those users are one of the key design issues in uplink transmission of cellular networks. In this paper, we consider the joint optimization of discrete power and resource blocks allocations to maximize the minimum EE among users subject to individual power budget constraints. The optimization problem is combinatorial. Thus, we propose an efficient algorithm, based on semidefinite relaxation with Gaussian randomization, to solve the resultant non-convex problem in polynomial time complexity. The numerical results show how well the proposed algorithm performs against the optimal one and indicate the impact of discrete power levels on the fairness-oriented EE optimization.