IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO.
2, FEBRUARY 2009
Adaptive Subcarrier Allocation Schemes for
Wireless OFDMA Systems in WiMAX Networks
Alessandro Biagioni, Romano Fantacci, Fellow, IEEE, Dania Marabissi, Member, IEEE,
and Daniele Tarchi, Member, IEEE
Abstract—WiMAX is one of the most important technolo-
gies for providing a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) in a
metropolitan area. The use of OFDM transmissions has been pro-
posed to reduce the effect of multipath fading in wireless commu-
nications. Moreover, multiple access is achieved by resorting to
the OFDMA scheme. Adaptive subcarrier allocation techniques
have been selected to exploit the multiuser diversity, leading to
an improvement of performance by assigning subchannels to the
users accordingly with their channel conditions. A method to
allocate subcarriers is to assign almost an equal bandwidth to all
users (fair allocation). However, it is well known that this method
limits the bandwidth efficiency of the system. In order to lower
this drawback, in this paper, two different adaptive subcarrier
allocation algorithms are proposed and analyzed. Their aim is
to share the network bandwidth among users on the basis of
specific channel conditions without loosing bandwidth efficiency
and fairness. Performance comparisons with the static and the
fair allocation approaches are presented in terms of bit error rate
and throughput to highlight the better behavior of the proposed
schemes in particular when users have different distances from
the BS.
Index Terms—Adaptive systems, Subcarrier allocation, Or-
thogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, WiMAX.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE INCREASING interest in multimedia applications
and high data rate services has lead to a grow in the
development of wireless communication systems. Wireless
systems have the capacity to address broad geographic areas
without the costly infrastructure required to deploy cabled
links and satisfy the users connection requirements both in
nomadic and mobile application scenarios.
In particular, the IEEE 802.16 family of standards [1], [2],
supported by the WiMAX commercial consortium, defines the
Physical and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers specifica-
tions for a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) communication
protocol. Among several alternatives, the IEEE 802.16 stan-
dard proposes the use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Mul-
tiplexing (OFDM) for mitigating frequency-dependent distor-
tion across the channel band and simplifying the equalization
in a multipath fading environment [3]. The basic principle of
OFDM is parallelization: by dividing the available bandwidth
into several smaller bands that are called subcarriers, the
transmitted signal over each subcarrier may experience flat
Manuscript received 15 January 2008; revised 8 August 2008. This work
has been partially supported by Italian National projects INSYEME under
grant number RBIP063BPH and WORLD under grant number 2007R989S.
The authors are with the Depertment of Electronic and Telecommunica-
tions, University of Firenze Via di S. Marta, 3 I-50139 Firenze, Italy.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSAC.2009.090212.
0733-8716/08/$25.00 
217
fading. Moreover, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access (OFDMA) is used to provide a flexible multiuser
access scheme: disjunctive sets of subcarriers and OFDM
symbols are allocated to different users.
To have more flexibility and higher efficiency, adaptive
OFDM schemes are adopted to maximize the system capacity
and maintain the desired system performance [4], [5]: the
inherent multi-carrier nature of OFDM allows the use of link
adaptation techniques according to the narrow-band channel
gains.
Transmission techniques which do not adapt the trans-
mission parameters to the fading channel are designed to
maintain acceptable performance under the worst-case channel
conditions with a consequent insufficient utilization of the
available resources. Conversely, if the channel fade level is
known at the transmitter, Shannon capacity can be approached
by matching transmission parameters to time-varying channel:
the signal transmitted to and by a particular station can be
modified to take into account the channel gain variation.
Usually, wireless systems use power control as the preferred
method for link adaptation: the power of the transmitted signal
is adjusted in order to maintain the quality of the received
signal. Therefore, the transmit power is kept low when a
user is close to the BS; conversely, it increases when the
user distance from the BS increases. Most of the algorithms
proposed in the literature are based on the water filling prin-
ciple [6], that provides the optimal power allocation through
a spectrally shaped radio channel for either maximizing the
channel capacity under the constrained transmit power or
minimizing the transmit power under providing fixed bit rate
and error probability (or equivalently minimizing the bit error
rate (BER) under the constrained transmit power and bit rate).
Although the use of power control can improve the system
performance, usually, the total channel capacity is not used
efficiently at any transmission time if the modulation scheme
is fixed. To overcome this drawback, adaptive modulation and
coding (AMC) schemes have been introduced. In a system
where the AMC is adopted, the modulation and coding orders
are changed to match the actual channel gain: users close to
the BS usually see high channel gains so that they are typically
assigned higher-order modulations and higher code-rates but
the modulation-order and/or the code-rate usually decrease
when the user distance from the BS increases (low channel
gains) [7].
Furthermore, in multiuser OFDMA systems, larger through-
put can be achieved by assigning the resources (i.e., the sub-
c 2008 IEEE
218 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009
carriers) in an adaptively manner. Subcarrier allocation strate-
gies dynamically assign subcarriers to users having the best
instantaneous channel conditions (i.e., frequency response) by
exploiting the multiuser diversity: the instantaneous channel
conditions for different users are almost mutually independent;
i.e., the most attenuated subcarriers for a given user may result
not to be in a deep fade for other users.
Subcarrier allocation strategies can follow different crite-
ria; examples are those having a fair data rate distribution
among users or maximizing the overall network throughput,
depending on the network requirements. Recently, a particular
attention has been devoted to the cross-layer optimization of
OFDM systems [8]–[10]. In particular, the authors of [10]
proposed an algorithm to provide almost equal data rates for
all users. With this strategy more resources are allocated to
users with bad channel conditions or far away from the base
station. As a consequence, the capacity of users with good
channel conditions are not fully exploited. In [11], [12] the
problem of a fairness scheduling in resource allocation have
been introduced and discussed for the case of multicarrier
systems.
In addition to this, in [13]–[16] adaptive subcarriers al-
location techniques have been addressed, jointly with other
resources allocation strategies, e.g., power allocation and bit
assignment schemes. In particular, the adaptive subcarriers
and bits assignment scheme presented in [15] has the aim of
minimizing the total transmitted power over the entire network
while satisfying the data rate requirement of each link. In [16]
a low complexity sub-optimal power and subcarrier allocation
for OFDMA systems is considered, proposing a heuristic non-
iterative method as an extension of the ordered subcarrier
selection algorithm for a single user case to OFDMA systems.
This paper proposes two new allocation strategies based
on the consideration that absolute fairness may lead to a
low bandwidth efficiency and the throughput maximization is
sometimes unfair for those users with bad channel conditions.
The aim of the proposed strategies is to increase the bandwidth
efficiency of the system trying to find a trade-off between
efficiency and fairness. Differently from previous papers [13]–
[16] the resource allocation unit is not the subcarrier but a
time/frequency unit (named slot), in accordance with WiMAX
systems.
A generalized version of the dynamic resource allocation
scheme [10] to the case of a fair slots assignment among
users is also presented in the paper. [10] is often used
as a benchmark to validate the performance of subcarrier
allocation schemes [17]–[20]: we have considered the exten-
tion of [10] to the slot assignment case as a benchmark
to validate the good behavior of the two novel schemes
proposed here. Aims of such allocation strategies are to take
into account the distribution of channel capacity among the
users and improve performances with respect to a non adaptive
allocation scheme. The slot allocation is performed based
on channel state information (CSI), which allows to fully
exploit the characteristics of the multicarrier transmission. The
performance has been evaluated by using a fixed modulation
scheme and an adaptive modulation scheme [21] in order to
evaluate the advantages of the joint use of adaptive modulation
and subcarrier allocation strategies.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section II, the system
model is presented. Section III introduces the different sub-
carrier allocation strategies. Section IV shows the simulation
results and, finally, in Section V some conclusions are drawn.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
In this paper, an OFDMA system for mobile wireless
MANs, based on IEEE 802.16e standard [2], is considered.
In OFDM communication systems, the available spectrum is
divided into a large number of subcarriers. Efficient modu-
lation schemes are adopted to transmit data information on
these subcarriers by resorting to the use of the inverse discrete
Fourier transform (IDFT) in transmission and the discrete
Fourier transform (DFT) at the receiving end.
In particular, we focus here, on an OFDM-based wireless
communication system where K users can communicate with
the base station, by using a set of subcarriers, under the form
of slot, or subchannel: in particular, accordingly to [2], we
suppose that a slot is formed by a group of adjacent subcarriers
subdivided in 48 data subcarriers and 6 pilot subcarriers,
for a total of 54 subcarriers. This slot structure is the same
for both downlink and uplink, and is based on the concept
of bin, which is a set of 9 subcarriers (8 data subcarriers
and 1 pilot subcarrier): an AMC slot is, therefore, defined
as set of bins satisfying the relation N × M = 6, where
N is the number of consecutive bins and M the number
of consecutive OFDM symbols. In this work, the slots are
composed by 18 subcarriers contiguous in frequency (N = 2)
over 3 consecutive OFDM symbols (M = 3), accordingly to
the IEEE 802.16e standard for the AMC permutation scheme.
Within a frame, different subchannels, i.e., different sets of
slots (groups of contiguous subcarriers in the time-frequency
domain) are assigned to users. We have considered a frame
duration TF equal to 8 ms and a 1024 FFT for a 10 MHz
channel according to the SOFDMA (Scalable OFDMA) con-
cept [22]: the subcarrier spacing is a fixed parameter in all the
systems with different bandwidth.
The assumption is to adopt a TDD structure: this is the most
suitable solution for data traffic such as new IP based multi-
rate and multi-QoS services. The TDD frame begins with the
Downlink subframe and a guard time of 5 µs precedes the
Uplink part; then another guard time of 5 µs separates a frame
from the following one. We have chosen a balanced division of
the frame, dividing it into 40 OFDM symbols for the Downlink
subframe and 39 OFDM symbols for the Uplink subframe,
namely equally parceling the 79 symbols frame defined in the
IEEE 802.16e standard as possible size for the OFDMA frame.
The proposed adaptive subchannel allocation strategies are
based on the estimation of the different channel responses
belonging to different users. By assuming the channel as
reciprocal in frequency, after estimating the channel response
during the uplink subframe of the current TDD frame, and
considering it still valid during the downlink subframe of
the same TDD frame, the estimation of the complex channel
coefficients Ĥ(n) (n-th subcarrier) is performed at the BS
within the Uplink subframe. It is important to point out that,
even if we assume a perfect knowledge of the channel impulse
response at the receiving side, we take into account the delay
BIAGIONI et al.: ADAPTIVE SUBCARRIER ALLOCATION SCHEMES FOR WIRELESS OFDMA SYSTEMS IN WIMAX NETWORKS 219

The channel capacity of a subcarrier in the OFDMA mul-

tiplex can be expressed as:
   
Es Es
Cp = Bp log2 1 + = Bp log2 1 + , (1)
Ts N0 Bp N0
where Bp is the subcarrier bandwidth (corresponding to the
total system bandwidth divided by the number of carriers), Es
is the mean symbol energy, Ts is the symbol time and N0 is
the power spectral density of the AWGN channel. Note that, it
has been considered here that in an OFDM system the carrier
spacing (Bp ) is equal to the inverse of the symbol time (Ts ).
Eq. (1) defines the maximum capacity of a subcarrier under
the assumption of a continuous use of it. In our case, we have
to take into account that the capacity of a subcarrier within an
OFDMA frame is limited by the duration of a single OFDM
Fig. 1. An example of Slot Allocation considerting three concurrent users
symbol time: hence, the previous value must be divided by the
number of OFDM symbols per frame (Ns ) in order to obtain
the capacity belonging to a single tone in a frame.
 
introduced by the channel estimation algorithm: the adaptation 1 1 Es
Cp,OFDMA = Cp = Bp log2 1 + . (2)
is performed considering the channel state at the previous Ns Ns N0
frame time and it can introduce a performance loss in time By introducing the effect of the multipath-fading, the capacity
varying channels. of an N × M rectangular slot (N contiguous carriers in the
frequency domain per M OFDM symbols) becomes:
 
A. Adaptive Modulation Scheme N ·M Es 2
CSLOT (ᾱSLOT ) = Bp log2 1 + ᾱSLOT , (3)
Ns N0
The AMC system [21] is modeled here as a Moore’s state
machine, where each state is represented by a modulation where ᾱSLOT denotes the mean value of the multipath channel
scheme: QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM. The adaptation al- coefficient (with respect to the slot) defined as:
gorithm is basically characterized by three thresholds, repre- M  N
αi,j
senting the transitions instances between different modulation ᾱSLOT = (4)
N ·M
schemes: when a threshold is reached, the modulation order i=1 j=1
changes and the state machine keeps a different state until an- where αi,j is the multipath channel coefficient of the i-th
other threshold is reached. Under the assumption of comparing subcarrier in the j-th OFDM symbol assumed here as Rayleigh
the actual estimated mean channel attenuation factor over a distributed random variable.
slot to the thresholds, it is possible to select the most suitable
Let us consider a system with K users and an OFDMA
modulation scheme to be used. The thresholds definition de-
frame formed by A slots along the frequency dimension and
pend on the goal of the adaptation algorithm, i.e., maximizing
B slots along the time dimension, resulting in a total of A · B
the throughput or minimizing the error probability.
slots. Let us define:
• k: user index, with k = 1, . . . , K;
III. A DAPTIVE SUBCHANNEL ALLOCATION • i: slot index along frequency dimension, with i =
0, . . . , A − 1;
In an OFDMA system, resources are considered both in the • j: slot index along time dimension, with j = 0, . . . , B−1;
frequency and time dimensions: different users can be assigned • ᾱkSLOTi,j : averaged multipath coefficient within the slots
subcarriers on a slot basis belonging to different frequencies with indices (i, j), for the k-th user.
or to different OFDM symbol times within the same frame.
Hence, the available resources within the OFDMA frame form In this paper, an ideal channel estimation in assumed, i.e.,
a grid of slots that are assigned to users according to suitable the exact value of SNRki,j is known at the receiving site. The
criteria. amount of the channel assigned to a given user is related in our
Fig. 1 shows an example of allocation within a frame by case to the overall number of slots assigned to it. In particular,
considering three users (each one represented by a different it results to be:
gray flavor). It is possible to highlight that each slot is N ·M  
independent to each other and allocated to one user and one CSLOT
k
= Bp log2 1 + SNRki,j
i,j
Ns
user only.
for k = 1, 2, . . . , K. (5)
The adaptive subcarrier allocation algorithms proposed in
this paper are based on the estimation of the channel capacity In order to simplify our notation, in (5) and what follows the
belonging to slots. By means of CSI, it is possible to foreseen dependence of CSLOT
k
i,j
on ᾱkSLOTi,j is omitted. From above,
the channel capacity for a user if that slot is assigned to it. it is easy to note that the maximum capacity value assigned
220 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

to each user can be derived as: response. When we have a large pathloss or high user mobility
 B−1
A−1  this approach becomes unfair for users under poor channel
Cmax,k = CSLOT
k
i,j
for k = 1, 2, . . . , K. (6) conditions [10]. Under particular conditions, it may happen
i=0 j=0 that some users are unable to access the channel during a
In practical applications, all users have to share the available frame, hence, suffering for unacceptable long transmission
capacity in slots usually according to an optimal dynamic delay that could degrade the performance of network protocols
allocation algorithm. In order to investigate optimal slot as- such as the popular TCP/IP (e.g., by increasing the packet
signment criteria, as in [10], we formulate the slot assignment dropping probability).
problem as a non-linear integer programming by introducing Scope of this paper is to lower this drawback by proposing
slot allocation algorithms that permits to improve fairness in
for each frame and each user the slot allocation matrix Xk ,
with A rows, B columns, and elements xki,j defined as: the slot assignment. As a consequence, the OSDA will be
 not further discussed in the remaining part of this paper. In
1 SLOTi,j assigned to k-th user particular, we discuss in what follows three solutions, namely:
xi,j =
k
(7) Fair allocation, Proportional allocation and Equal Capacity
0 SLOTi,j not assigned to k-th user
Increment allocation.
Moreover, as stated before, we have to take into account that
slots need to be allocated to one user and to one user only. A. Fair allocation
Hence, the following constraint has to be fulfilled:
 The first allocation algorithm considered in this paper
xki,j = 1 ∀i, j (8) represents a generalized version of that proposed in [10]. The
k∈Ξ main modification introduced here is that of considering the
where Ξ is the set of all users. According to [10], the channel slot allocation instead of single carrier allocation. The problem
capacity assigned to the k-th user by a certain allocation to be solved in an optimal manner is to allocate slots to users in
algorithm can be defined as: order to maximize the minimum of all users’ assigned capacity
Ck (i.e., user’s throughput). This can be obtained by searching
 B−1
A−1  for each user the slots allocation matrix X̂k that guarantees
Ck = xki,j · CSLOT
k
i,j
for k = 1, 2, . . . , K, (9) the minimum of Ck for k = 1, 2, . . . , K, i.e., the highest
i=0 j=0
among all the possible allocations values resulting by different
From above, it follows that the goal of any allocation algorithm slot allocation solutions. From above it follows that the fair
is to determine the matrix Xk according to suitable optimal allocation problem can be formulated as follows:
criteria. We can start our analysis by extending to the dynamic  
slot allocation case under consideration the approach proposed argmax min CSLOTi,j
k
(15)
Xk k∈Ξ
in [8], [9] for the case of an optimal subcarrier assignment
(frequency dimension only) named here optimal slot dynamic subject to
allocation (OSDA). 
xki,j = 1 ∀i, j (16)
Under the assumption of a fixed power allocation and
k∈Ξ
having as a target to maximize the network throughput, the
optimal subcarrier allocation problem [8], [9] can be reformu-  B−1
A−1 
xki,j ≥ 1 ∀k ∈ Ξ. (17)
lated here as follows:
i=0 j=0
 A−1
 B−1

max xki,j · CSLOT
k
(10) As stated in [10], this algorithm requires high computational
i,j
Xk complexity due to the recursive nature of the solution. In
k∈Ξ i=0 j=0
order to lower this drawback we have resorted to search for a
subject to: suboptimal solution by the following iterative algorithm. Let

xki,j = 1 ∀i, j (11) us define:
k∈Ξ • s(i, j): the slot of frequency index i and time index j;


A−1 B−1 • S: the set of free slots;
xki,j ≥ 1 ∀k ∈ Ξ. (12) • Sk : the set of slots assigned to the k-th user;
i=0 j=0 • Rk : the capacity assigned to the k-th user.

By means of the analytical method proposed in [9] we have The fair allocation algorithm results to be:
that the set of slots assigned to the user k is globally optimal 1) Initialization:
if and only if: a) Rk ← 0 for k = 1, . . . , K;
CSLOT
k
≥ CSLOT
l
∀i, j , ∀k, l ∈ Ξ (13) b) Sk ← ∅ for k = 1, . . . , K;
i,j i,j
c) S ← {s(i, j) : i = 0, . . . , A − 1, j =
Hence, the optimal slot assignment results to be: 0, . . . , B − 1};
CSLOT
k
= argmax CSLOT
l
(14) 2) for k = 1, . . . , K:
i,j i,j
l∈Ξ a) find a slot s(i, j) ∈ S so that SN Ri,jk
≥ SN Rn,m
k

The OSDA permits to achieve the maximum network for each slot index (n, m) for which at least a free
throughput by assign a slot to that user having the best channel slot in S exists;
BIAGIONI et al.: ADAPTIVE SUBCARRIER ALLOCATION SCHEMES FOR WIRELESS OFDMA SYSTEMS IN WIMAX NETWORKS 221

b) Sk ← Sk ∪ {s(i, j)}; As before, the optimal solution for the max-min problem re-
c) S ← S − {s(i, j)}; quires an intensive computation, making a suboptimal solution
d) Rk ← Rk + CSLOTki,j ; more attractive. Towards this end, we have resorted to the
3) while S = ∅: following algorithm:
1) Initialization:
a) find the user k so that Rk ≤ Ru for each user u;
b) find the slot s(i, j) ∈ S so that SN Ri,j k
≥ a) compute Cmax,k for k = 1, . . . , K accord-
SN Rn,m for each slot index (n, m) for which at
k ingly to (6);
least a free slot in S exists; b) Rk ← 0 for k = 1, . . . , K;
c) Sk ← Sk ∪ {s(i, j)}; c) Sk ← ∅ for k = 1, . . . , K;
d) S ← S − {s(i, j)}; d) S ← {s(i, j) : i = 0, ..., A − 1, j = 0, ..., B −
e) Rk ← Rk + CSLOTki,j . 1};
2) for k = 1, . . . , K:
The algorithm, after an initialization phase, assigns to a
given user a slot within the frequencies in which that user has a) find a slot s(i, j) ∈ S so that SN Ri,j
k
≥ SN Rn,m
k

the best channel conditions. Subsequently, all the remaining for each slot index (n, m) for which at least a free
slots are assigned through an iterative process: for each itera- slot in S exists;
tion, the user with the lowest amount of capacity is selected b) Sk ← Sk ∪ {s(i, j)};
and a slot is allocated to him. The slot to assign is selected c) S ← S − {s(i, j)};
among the ones that provide the best SNR to that user. It is d) Rk ← Rk + CSLOTi,k ;
important to stress that the slot selection criterion outlined 3) while S = ∅:
before allows to exploit multiuser diversity in an efficient a) find the user k so that Cmax,k
Rk
≤ Cmax,u
Ru
for each
manner, hence, achieving very good performance. user u;
As in [10] we can state that the complexity of the proposed b) find a slot s(i, j) ∈ S so that SN Ri,j
k
≥ SN Rn,m
k

algorithm is very low in comparison with the complexity of for each slot index (n, m) for which at least a free
the solution of the max-min problem (15)-(17). Moreover, slot in S exists;
here again the suboptimal algorithm has achieved results very c) Sk ← Sk ∪ {s(i, j)};
close to the optimal solution [10] so that only suboptimal d) S ← S − {s(i, j)};
algorithm results will be considered in carrying out perfor- e) Rk ← Rk + CSLOTk .
i,j
mance comparison in Figs. 2-9. In particular, as stated in The difference between this algorithm and the previous one
Section I, the obtained results will be considered as benchmark is the user selection: in this case, the selected user is the
in performing performance comparisons with the novel slot one who has the minimum ratio between the actual capacity
assignment approaches proposed here. value and the maximum obtainable capacity value. For the
Fair allocation case, the suboptimal algorithm achieves results
close to the optimal solution with a lower complexity, hence,
B. Proportional allocation in the next figures, only suboptimal algorithm results will be
The main lack of the previous algorithm, is that users with reported.
the best channel conditions obtain a lower number of resources
with respect to users with worst channel conditions, hence, the C. Equal Capacity Increment allocation
channel capacity is not fully exploited. To avoid this drawback, The goal of the strategy proposed in this subsection is
a different allocation strategy is proposed here by assuming to guarantee to each user an equal capacity increment with
that users with the best channel conditions obtain a larger respect to a non-adaptive strategy. This technique attempts
amount of capacity. Being the maximum capacity allocable to to distribute the additional amount of capacity in an equal
each user given by (6), the slots allocation for the algorithm manner among all users. In particular, the value of capacity
under consideration searches for capacity values for each user resulting for each of them through a non-adaptive technique
proportional to: is first derived; next, accordingly to a suitable algorithm a
C1 : C2 : ... : CK = Cmax,1 : Cmax,2 : ... : Cmax,K . (18) slot allocation is performed in order to have an equal capacity
increment with respect to that value.
Hence, we can formulate the optimal proportional slot alloca- We consider now a non-adaptive strategy in which slots
tion problem as: belonging to different users are distinguished only by the
  position in the time domain (that is a TDMA system); in
Ck
argmax min . (19) this case, the different channel conditions an user has on
Xk k∈Ξ Cmax,k
different frequencies are averaged and, therefore, the amount
subject to: of capacity assigned to the k-th user results to be:

xki,j = 1 ∀i, j 1 
(20) A−1 B−1
 1
Ck = Cmax,k = C k . (22)
k∈Ξ
K K i=0 j=0 SLOTi,j
 B−1
A−1 
xki,j ≥ 1 ∀k ∈ Ξ (21) This value is used as an estimation of the capacity of a non-
i=0 j=0 adaptive algorithm. Let us define Gk as the difference between
222 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

 TABLE I
the capacity assigned to the k-th user and Ck : ITU-R VEHICULAR CHANNEL MODEL A, WITH 6 PATHS [23]

Gk = Rk − Ck . (23) Channel A
The value Gk represents the capacity increment for the k-th Tap Relative delay Average Power Doppler
user with respect to a non-adaptive strategy: the allocation (ns) (dB) Spectrum
scheme under consideration has the target of maximizing the 1 0 0.0 Classic
minimum Gk for all users (i.e., k = 1, 2, . . . , K). It follows 2 310 -1.0 Classic
that the optimal slot assignment problem according to the 3 710 -9.0 Classic
Equal Capacity Increment criterion can be formulated as: 4 1090 -10.0 Classic
    5 1730 -15.0 Classic

argmax min Gk = argmax min(Rk − Ck ) . (24) 6 2510 -20.0 Classic
Xk k∈Ξ Xk k∈Ξ

subject to

xki,j = 1 ∀i, j (25)
• maximum Doppler deviation fd,max
408 Hz (mobility
k∈Ξ
terminals up to 125 km/h);
 B−1
A−1 
xki,j ≥ 1 ∀k ∈ Ξ (26) • maximum delay spread τmax = 2.51 µs;
i=0 j=0
• guard time 1/8 of an OFDMA symbol duration;
• ITU-R vehicular channel model A, with 6 paths [23] as
As for the previous cases, the optimal solution has an high reported in Tab. I.
computational complexity, so that we have resorted here again
to a sub-optimal solution according to the following algorithm: The modulation schemes considered in our analysis are
1) Initialization: QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM accordingly to the WiMAX

a) compute Ck for k = 1, . . . , K accordingly specifications. Both static and adaptive modulation schemes
to (22); have been considered in deriving numerical results as ex-
b) Rk ← 0 for k = 1, . . . , K; plained in Section II-A. In order to take into account the actual

c) Gk ← −Ck for k = 1, . . . , K; modulation and coding used in the IEEE802.16e standard a
d) Sk ← ∅ for k = 1, . . . , K; constraint must be introduced: we assumed here an upper limit
e) S ← {s(i, j) : i = 0, . . . , A − 1, to (5), due to the finite set of used modulation schemes, given
j = 0, . . . , B − 1}; by:
NMn
2) while S = ∅: Rmax = , (27)
Ns T s
a) find the user k so that Gk ≤ Gu for each user u;
b) find a slot s(i, j) ∈ S so that SN Ri,j
k
≥ SN Rn,mk where n is the number of bits per symbols corresponding to
for each slot index (n, m) for which at least a free the used modulation scheme.
slot in S exists; Let us start our analysis by neglecting the effects of the
c) Sk ← Sk ∪ {s(i, j)}; pathloss on the performance of the considered allocation
d) S ← S − {s(i, j)}; scheme. This case corresponds to a particular user distribution
e) Rk ← Rk + CSLOTki,j ; where each one is at the same distance from the base station.

f) Gk ← Rk − Ck for k = 0, ..., K − 1. Under this assumption, the differences in channel conditions
among different users are caused only by the multipath fading
The main difference between this algorithm and the fair
effect. In practical applications this can be achieved with a
allocation consists in the user selection: the user for which
good approximation by resorting to efficient power control
the value of Gk is minimum is selected, so as to make
 techniques, that estimate the different user attenuations and
approximately equal the capacity increment Ck for all the
compensate them by adopting with different powers in trans-
users. As for the previous cases, the computational complexity
mission. Numerical results are provided here as a function
of the suboptimal algorithm is very low with respect to the
of the mean signal-to-noise ratio at the receiving end under
optimal alternative with results very close to the optimal
the assumption of a number of active users equal to 20,
solution and, hence, omitted in the next figures.
and considering the use of a maximum throughput adaptive
modulation technique in transmission according to Section
IV. N UMERICAL RESULTS II-A and [21]. Fig. 2 and 3 show the performance of the
In this Section numerical results obtained through computer proposed schemes in comparison with the static allocation
simulations will be presented. In particular, the attention will in terms of bit error rate and throughput, respectively. These
be focused on performance comparisons between the proposed figures, as expected, point out the better behavior of the
adaptive allocation algorithms and a non-adaptive allocation proposed methods. These figures also show that when pathloss
strategy. The values of the system parameters assumed in effects are removed off the proposed methods achieve almost
carrying out our analysis have been: the same performance.
• radio frequency carrier fc = 3.5 GHz; Let us consider a more realistic case where the pathloss
• bandwidth of 10 MHz; effects have been considered. The pathloss model is based
BIAGIONI et al.: ADAPTIVE SUBCARRIER ALLOCATION SCHEMES FOR WIRELESS OFDMA SYSTEMS IN WIMAX NETWORKS
Fig. 2. System Bit Error Rate comparisons for different slot allocation
strategies (pathloss effects have been neglected).
Fig. 3. System throughput comparisons for different slot allocation strategies
(pathloss effects have been neglected).
on [24], [25] with pathloss value, in dB, given by:
 
D of the reference user; maximum throughput adaptive mod-
P L = L + 10 · γ · log10 , D > D0 , (28)
D0
where D is the user distance from BS, D0 is the reference
distance (set to 100 meters), γ is the pathloss exponent (set
to 4.375 accordingly to an urban environment) and L equal to
20 log10 ( 4πD
λ ) is the pathloss value at the reference distance
0 the fixed one: the user obtains more channel capacity (and
(with respect to the wavelength λ) that, in this case, is equal
to 83.32 dB.
Due to the presence of pathloss, the signal-to-noise ratio of
the users (having different distance from the base station) is
different, due to pathloss and multipath fading. A cell radius
of 10 km has been considered and the system must provide an
average SNR of 7 dB at the edge of the cell. The average SNR
for each user is computed accordingly to the pathloss formula
and the SNR value on the cell edge. The number of active
users is set to 20 with their positions randomly distributed
within the cell area; the performance of a single user have been
evaluated with respect to the distance from the base station:
the simulations have been repeated with different positions of
the reference user (1 km to 10 km from the base station, with
a step of 1 km).
223
Fig. 4. User throughput comparisons for different slot allocation strategies
and pathloss channel case.
Fig. 5. User Bit Error Rate comparisons for different slot allocation strategies,
and pathloss channel case.
Fig 4 shows performance results in terms of throughput
ulation technique discussed in Section II-A has been used.
The comparison of the adaptive strategies with a fixed (non-
adaptive) slot allocation highlights better performance for the
proportional and equal increment allocation with respect to
thus more throughput) at any distance from the base station.
In particular, the proposed proportional and equal increment
allocation strategies have the best performance for distances up
to 7 km and, anyway, are better than a fixed allocation even for
higher distances. The fair allocation shows an almost constant
throughput for any distance, resulting disadvantageous for the
users near the BS (because it has a lower throughput than a
fixed allocation) and profitable for the users far from the BS.
In Fig. 5 the performance in terms of bit error rate in case of
a pathloss environment has been evaluated for different values
of the average SNR at the receiving side. This figure highlights
the better performance for the three adaptive schemes with
respect to the fixed allocation scheme. The fair allocation
scheme seems to have the best performance for high SNR
values.
224 IEEE JOURNAL ON SELECTED AREAS IN COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 27, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2009

1.8 1.6

1.6 1.4

1.4
1.2

1.2
1
Throughput (Mbit/s)

Throughput (Mbit/s)
1
0.8
0.8

0.6
0.6

0.4
0.4

0.2 Fixed allocation 0.2 Fixed allocation

Fair allocation Fair allocation
Proportional allocation Proportional allocation
Equal increment allocation Equal increment allocation
0 0
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
Distance (meters) Distance (meters)

Fig. 6. User throughput comparisons for different slot allocation strategies Fig. 8. User throughput comparisons for different slot allocation strategies,
with 64-QAM modulation, and pathloss channel case. for the case of pathloss channel, and users close to the BS.

1
Fixed allocation 2.5
Fair allocation
Proportional allocation
Equal increment allocation

0.1
2

Throughput (Mbit/s)
0.01
1.5
Bit Error Rate

0.001
1

1e-04
0.5

Fixed allocation
Fair allocation
Proportional allocation
1e-05 Equal increment allocation
10 15 20 25 30 35 40 0
1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
SNR (dB)
Distance (meters)

Fig. 7. User Bit Error Rate comparisons for different slot allocation strategies Fig. 9. User throughput comparisons for different slot allocation strategies,
with 64-QAM modulation, and pathloss channel case. for the case of pathloss channel, and users far from the BS.

In Fig. 6 and 7 the results for a fixed 64-QAM modulation

adaptive way by different users. In particular, two adaptive
scheme are shown in terms of throughput and bit error rate
slot allocation algorithms have been proposed and compared
per user. By comparing these results with that give in Figs. 4
with alternatives previously proposed in the literature on this
and 5 it is possible to note that he use of adaptive strategies
subject limited to the case of an optimal subcarriers allocation.
allows to improve performance with respect to a non-adaptive
These algorithms are based on the estimation of the channel
allocation scheme.
capacity belonging to the slots to be assigned. The first pro-
Finally, two limit cases have been considered by evaluating
posed method, named proportional allocation scheme, assigns
the performance in terms of throughput by considering that all
different amounts of capacity to users, proportionally to the
the users except one are no more at a random distance from the
channel conditions seen by each user; the second strategy,
BS. In particular, in deriving the results shown in Figs. 8 and 9,
named equal capacity increment approach, provides an equal
we have assumed that all the user except one are, respectively,
increase of capacity to all the users with respect to a non-
at 1 km and 10 km from the BS. These further results prove
adaptive slot allocation technique. The proposed algorithms
that the proportional and equal capacity increment are better
permit to achieve a better trade-off between fairness and
for users near the BS while the fair allocation scheme is better
bandwidth efficiency respect to the fair allocation and show
for users far from the BS. This is mainly due to the fact that
a performance increase with respect to a statical allocation
the fair allocation tries to allocate the subcarrier in a fair way
independently of channel conditions and at any distance from
while in the other cases the subcarrier are allocated in order to
the base station.
maximize the overall cell capacity that is done by damaging
the most far users.
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225
Alessandro Biagioni was born in Pistoia, Italy, in
1982. He received the degree in Telecommunications
Engineering from the University of Florence in
2007 with a thesis on wireless broadband OFDMA
systems. He is currently working in a company
operating in the design of telecommunications net-
works and security and control systems, especially
for application in the field of transportation.
Romano Fantacci (F’05) born in Pistoia, Italy,
graduated from the Engineering School of the Uni-
versit di Firenze, Florence, Italy, with a degree in
electronics in 1982. He received his Ph.D. degree
in telecommunications in 1987. After joining the
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni as
an assistant professor, he was appointed associate
professor in 1991 and full professor in 1999. His cur-
rent research interests are digital communications,
computer communications, queuing theory, satellite
communication systems, wireless broadband com-
munication networks, ad-hoc and sensor networks. He has been involved in
several European Space Agency (ESA) and INTELSAT advanced research
projects. He is the author of numerous articles published in prestigious com-
munication science journals. He guest edited special issues in IEEE Journals
and magazines and served as symposium chair of several IEEE conferences,
including VTC, ICC and Globecom. Professor Fantacci received the IEE
IERE Benefactor premium in 1990 and IEEE COMSOC Award Distinguished
Contributions to Satellite Communications in 2002. He is currently serving as
Associate Editor for Telecommunication Systems, International J. Commun.
Systems, IEEE Trans. Commun. and Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on
Wireless Communications.
Dania Marabissi (M’00) born in Chianciano, Italy.
She received the degree in Telecommunications En-
gineering and the PhD degree in Informatics and
Telecommunications Engineering from the Univer-
sity of Florence in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
She joined the Electronic and Telecommunications
Department at University of Florence in 2000 where
now works as assistant professor. She currently con-
ducts research on physical layer design for broad-
band wireless systems. In particular her interests
include WiMAX and OFDM systems, resource al-
location strategies, channel estimation and synchronization. She has been
involved in several national and European research projects and is author
of technical papers published in international journals and conferences. She
is currently serving as Associate Editor for IEEE Transaction on Vehicular
Technology.
Daniele Tarchi (S’98, M’06) was born in Flo-
rence, Italy, in 1975. He received the MSc degree
in Telecommunications Engineering and the PhD
degree in Informatics and Telecommunications En-
gineering from the University of Florence, Italy, in
2000 and 2004, respectively. He is now an assistant
professor at the University of Florence, Italy. His
research interests are in both Data Link and Phys-
ical Layers, with particular interests to Resource
Allocation algorithms in wireless networks, Link
Adaptation and Adaptive Modulation and Coding
Techniques, MAC Protocols for Broadband wireless access. He has been
involved in several national projects (Insyeme, Rescue, Pattern and Women)
as well as European projects (Nexway, Newcom, Satnex, COST289). He
is currently serving as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communications and has been reviewer of several technical papers submitted
to journals and magazines.