Optimal Resource Allocation with Principle of Equality and Diminishing Marginal Utility in Wireless Networks

In this paper, we study the optimal resource allocation problem in a wireless network, where all types of traffic including best effort and quality of service (QoS; Soft QoS and Hard QoS) are described by a unified utility function. The attacked problem is casted into a network utility maximization (NUM) model. We formulate the fairness index in terms of users’ utility and traffic type parameters, and then study their relationships. Law of diminishing marginal utility is widely accepted in economics. In this paper, we establish the principle of equality and diminishing marginal utility that enables us to find the desired optimal solution to the NUM model by using this principle, correspondingly for the case where the total resource is sufficient and for the case where the total resource is insufficient. We propose some essential theorems and algorithms to find the optimal solution for the above two cases. The proposed algorithms are evaluated via simulation results. The theoretical analysis and simulation results not only validate the efficacy and efficiency of the proposed algorithms but also disclose the relation between the optimal resource allocation and the factors of traffic types, total available resource and user’s channel quality and the relation between fairness and total resource with respect to a certain allocation scheme.