Impact of User Scaling in Resource Allocation with Carrier Aggregation for Cellular Networks

The continuing evolution in smart devices and their increasing demand for data bring the need for a better exploiting of current communication infrastructure. Several resource allo-cation with carrier aggregation solutions for cellular networks have been proposed to better utilize the available spectrum and improve end users’ quality of experience. Existing algorithms that are based on utility proportional fairness are considered promising solutions. However, such algorithms allocate resources based upon sub-optimal strategies, or being conceived as an optimal allocation problem, might be non-scalable due to the centralized computation architecture. In this paper, a distributed computational optimization algorithm to determine the optimal rate allocation in a LTE network is presented. The distributed optimization approach accounts for the scalability of the algorithm based upon the idea of each device is efficiently contributing to the solution of the problem. Similarly, the scalability of this approach is tested with a set of large-scale scenarios where it is demonstrated that a large number of devices can be simultaneously linked to the same Macro-cell as long as enough bandwidth is available to be assigned to each equipment.