A Sequential Min K-Cut Approach for Sum Rate Maximization of Clustered Cell-free Networking

Clustered cell-free networking is a promising networking scheme for future mobile communications systems where the base-stations (BSs) are densely deployed. Despite its great importance, finding the optimal networking strategy aiming at maximizing the sum rate of users in the network is a non-convex combinatorial optimization problem. Previous work relaxed the clustered cell-free networking problem into a graph min K-cut problem to solve it suboptimally. In this paper, we leverage optimization techniques to equivalently transform the original problem into a series of graph min K-cut problems with theoretical guarantee. It is worth mentioning that our approach is highly general, as it is applicable to various constraints, offering adaptability and flexibility to diverse practical networking scenarios. We apply this approach to three typical clustered cell-free networking problems. Simulation results show a consistent improvement of our approach compared to existing algorithms.