Performance analysis of chunk-based resource allocation in wireless OFDMA systems

In typical resource allocation for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), assigning subcarriers to the more favorable users provides beneficial diversity and increased system performance. It is however relevant to consider OFDMA resource allocation with a subcarrier adjacency restriction, grouping a number of adjacent subcarriers into a chunk, both for physical design simplicity and for complexity mitigation. In this paper, we classify different resource allocation policies for chunk-based allocation. We investigate how to optimally allocate resources by using discrete rates and discrete power levels. This is enabled by developing binary integer optimization models to obtain the optimal solution for this comparative study. We present numerical results to evaluate the performance of different resource allocation policies under different parameters and scenarios.