A general framework for optimizing AF based multi-relay OFDM systems

In this paper, we study the joint resource allocation problem in multi-carrier multi-relay aided dual hop single-user communication. We adopt orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as the transmission modulation and consider amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying scheme. The optimization is performed over power allocation at source node, beamforming at relay nodes and subcarrier pairing at two hops, such that the overall system throughput is maximized under limited power budget at the source and relay nodes. The optimization is a mixed integer programming problem which is solved through dual decomposition approach. To further reduce the complexity, we propose a suboptimal algorithm which sacrifices very little on the performance. Finally, simulation results are provided to corroborate the proposed studies.