Uplink resource allocation in OFDMA system using distributed antennas

In this article, we investigate uplink resource allocation in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems that use distributed antennas. The multiple distributed receiving antennas motivate us to exploit the spatial diversity to maximize the achievable rate of the system. Given constraints on the subcarrier allocation and the power limit of each user equipment (UE), a mixed-integer optimization problem is formulated. We first propose a centralized greedy algorithm to find the maximum achievable rate of the system. Then a heuristic algorithm is proposed that can be implemented in a distributed manner. Simulation results show that the heuristic algorithm can approximately achieve the maximum achievable rate of the system and result in significant system performance improvement over the approach assigning one user to each subcarrier.