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Energy-Efficient Joint User Association and Power Allocation in Relay-Aided Massive MIMO Systems

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Journal of Communications and Information Networks

Abstract

Energy efficiency is an important metric for downlink transmission in an amplify-and-forward relayaided massive multiple-input multiple-output system, but has not been well investigated. In this work, considering the characteristics of such a system and quality-of-service requirements of users, the energy-efficient joint user association and power allocation problem is studied. First, the closed-form expression of system energy efficiency under the proportional fairness criterion is derived. Then, the proportionally fair utility of system energy efficiency is maximized under constraints of minimum signal-to-noise ratio requirements of users and maximum transmit powers of the base station (BS) and relay stations. As it is difficult to solve this optimization problem directly due to its mixed-integer and non-convex features, the original problem is decomposed into a user association sub-problem and a power allocation sub-problem. For the former, optimum user association is determined by solving a Lagrangian dual problem with a sub-gradient algorithm; for the latter, optimum transmit powers of the BS and each relay station are determined by using Newton’s method. Finally, a sub-optimal solution of the original problem is obtained by a low-complexity iterative algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed joint user association and power allocation algorithm can offload the traffic of the BS effectively, keep the BS and relay stations operate at low power levels, and improve the system energy efficiency significantly, compared with user association-only schemes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information Processing, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, 541004, China

    Jing Chen, Hongbin Chen & Feng Zhao

Authors
  1. Jing Chen
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  2. Hongbin Chen
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  3. Feng Zhao
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hongbin Chen.

Additional information

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61671165, 61471135), the Guangxi Natural Science Foundation (Nos. 2015GXNSFBB139007, 2016GXNSFGA380009), the Fund of Key Laboratory of Cognitive Radio and Information Processing (Guilin University of Electronic Technology), Ministry of Education, China and the Guangxi Key Laboratory of Wireless Wideband Communication and Signal Processing (No. CRKL160105), and the Innovation Project of GUET Graduate Education (No. 2016YJCX91). The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was J. Y. Zhang.

Jing Chen was born in Shandong Province, China in 1989. She received the B.E. degree in communication engineering from Taishan University, China in June 2014 and the M.E. degree in communication and information systems from Guilin University of Electronic Technology in June 2017. Her research is focused on energy efficiency in relay-aided massive MIMO systems.

Hongbin Chen [corresponding author] was born in Hunan Province, China in 1981. He received the B.E. degree in electronic and information engineering from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, in 2004 and the Ph.D. degree in circuits and systems from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2009. From October 2006 to May 2008, he was a Research Assistant with the Department of Electronic and Information Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China. From May 2015 to May 2016, he was a Visiting Scholar with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore. He is now a Professor with the School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, Guilin, China. His research interests include energy-efficient wireless communications.

Feng Zhao was born in Shandong Province, China in 1974. He received the Ph.D. degree in communication and information systems from Shandong University, China in 2007. He is now a Professor with the School of Information and Communication, Guilin University of Electronic Technology, China. His research interests include wireless communications, signal processing, and information security.

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Chen, J., Chen, H. & Zhao, F. Energy-Efficient Joint User Association and Power Allocation in Relay-Aided Massive MIMO Systems. J. Commun. Inf. Netw. 3, 67–74 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41650-018-0015-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41650-018-0015-4

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