On optimized joint uplink/downlink resource allocation in OFDMA networks

The emergence of new wireless technologies paved the way to the introduction of a new class of symmetric services with joint uplink/downlink quality of service requirements. In this paper, we formulate joint uplink/downlink resource allocation in OFDMA networks as an optimization problem with total sum-rate maximization as an objective function. A regularization term is added to the problem formulation to account for the coupling between the uplink and the downlink directions. This additional term controls the resource allocation via the minimization of the per-user difference between the uplink and downlink rates. We solve the formulated problem using dual optimization techniques. Performance results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed joint uplink/downlink allocation scheme compared to traditional single-link schemes.