Towards Optimal Power Control via Ensembling Deep Neural Networks

A deep neural network (DNN) based power control method that aims at solving the non-convex optimization problem of maximizing the sum rate of a fading multi-user interference channel is proposed. Towards this end, we first present PCNet, which is a multi-layer fully connected neural network that is specifically designed for the power control problem. A key challenge in training a DNN for the power control problem is the lack of ground truth, i.e., the optimal power allocation is unknown. To address this issue, PCNet leverages the unsupervised learning strategy and directly maximizes the sum rate in the training phase. We then present PCNet+, which enhances the generalization capacity of PCNet by incorporating noise power as an input to the network. Observing that a single PCNet(+) does not universally outperform the existing solutions, we further propose ePCNet(+), a network ensemble with multiple PCNets(+) trained independently. Simulation results show that for the standard symmetric K -user Gaussian interference channel, the proposed methods can outperform state-of-the-art power control solutions under a variety of system configurations. Furthermore, the performance improvement of ePCNet comes with a reduced computational complexity.

I. Introduction

Interference management has increasingly become the bottleneck of the overall system performance in today’s wireless network, largely due to the dense deployment of base stations and mobiles, which creates a heavily interfering environment. Because of the broadcast nature of the wireless medium, the transmit power of a sender not only serves the purpose of information delivery to the intended receiver, but also inadvertently creates interference to other receivers. Hence, the transmit power needs to be carefully controlled to manage the interference and enhance the overall system performance.