IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO.

6, JUNE 2008 2045

User Set Estimation for Adaptive Resource Allocation in a

Multiuser-OFDM System
Jongkyung Kim, Kyungho Son, Youngyong Kim, and Jongsoo Seo

Channel state
Abstract—In the multiuser OFDM system, various adaptive information
subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithms have been inves-
tigated based on the assumption that the number of supportable
users is given. This paper proposes a supportable user set Subcarrier 1
Data of user 1 Adaptive
estimation in order to adopt those allocation algorithms in the Subcarrier 2
Supportable subcarrier,
multiuser-OFDM system. The number of supportable users is Data of user 2
user bit,
estimated in an iterative way by calculating the required power OFDM
set and

…
…

…
approximately and comparing it with an available power after estimation power
Subcarrier N
determining the number of subcarriers to be allocated. Simula- allocation
tion results show that the proposed user set estimation provides
a significant complexity reduction for the adaptive subcarrier-
bit-and-power allocation in the multiuser-OFDM system. Ke
Index Terms—Adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation, Fig. 1. Block diagram of the downlink multiuser OFDM transmitter with
multi-user OFDM. an adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation.

I. I NTRODUCTION
problem was introduced in the part of algorithm design but
A N ADAPTIVE subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation for
the multiuser OFDM system has been investigated in
[1] where a Lagrangian method of optimization is used to
not sufficiently dealt with.
This paper proposes a supportable user set estimation in
minimize the total transmit power under the constraints of order to adopt an adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation
the users’ QoS requirements. Although the algorithm achieves algorithm which assumes the number of supportable users
a dramatic gain in power efficiency, the high computational is given. The amount of required power is calculated ap-
complexity renders it impractical. Hence, many other adap- proximately after determining the number of subcarriers to
tive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithms have been be allocated. Comparing it with the total available power,
proposed to reduce the complexity of allocation algorithm [2]- the supportable user set is determined in an iterative way.
[6]. Estimating the supportable user set, the adaptive subcarrier-
Focusing on the complexity issue, most researches have bit-and-power allocation can be implemented efficiently with
proposed various allocation algorithms based on the assump- a significantly reduced complexity.
tion that the number of supportable users is given [1]- [5].
Assuming that K users are to be supported, the power
minimization problem is defined and solved under the users’ II. S UPPORTABLE U SER S ET E STIMATION P ROBLEM
QoS constraints. However, the exact number of supportable
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of a downlink multiuser
users can not be determined before the allocation is finished
OFDM transmitter employing the proposed supportable user
[5]. For example, suppose that an algorithm allocates the
set estimation. Using the channel state information from the
subcarriers, bit, and power assuming that K users could be
receiver, the transmitter applies the combined subcarrier-bit-
supportable, but it is found that the available power is not
and-power allocation algorithm in order to assign the different
enough to satisfy the K users’ QoS requirements. In this
subcarriers to the different users and the number of bits to be
case, the allocation algorithm has to be repeated after dropping
transmitted on each subcarrier. Depending on the number of
some users. Even though the algorithm is designed to solve
bits assigned to a subcarrier, a complex symbol is generated
the allocation problem efficiently, this repetition causes an
using a corresponding modulation scheme, and the transmit
unacceptably high computational complexity. Such a repetition
power is adjusted according to the allocated power level.
problem can happen in most allocation algorithms which
Applying OFDM modulation to N complex symbols, OFDM
assume the number of supportable users is given. In [5], this
symbol is generated and transmitted. Prior to applying the
Manuscript received January 22, 2007; revised August 5, 2007, January 1, allocation algorithm, the supportable user set is estimated by
2008, and February 1, 2008; accepted February 23, 2008. The associate editor the proposed iterative search method.
coordinating the review of this letter and approving it for publication was S.
Hanly. This work was supported in part by Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Let PT be the total available power at the transmitter and pk
Korea. be the required power for user k to transmit Rk bits per unit
The authors are with the Dept. of Electrical and Electronic En- OFDM signal. Assuming that all the users are sorted according
gineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, 120-749 (e-mail: {ace4y,
jsseo}@yonsei.ac.kr). to the priorities by the scheduler, the user set estimation
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2008.070090. problem is to find the maximum number of supportable users
1536-1276/08$25.00 
c 2008 IEEE

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 2046 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 6, JUNE 2008

Ke with total power constraint solution n∗ is not required in solving (3) if the current solution
is enough to calculate Preq for comparing with PT . Hence,
Ke = arg max K
the standard direct search method is adopted in which the

K
(1) optimum solution is obtained iteratively in the feasible set
s.t. Preq = pk < PT .
[9].
k=1
From the qth current solution n(q) , the (q + 1)th solution
Since calculating the required power by means of the adaptive n (q+1)
is updated as
subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation requires complex opera-
tions, (1) is solved in an iterative way by calculating pk n(q+1) = n(q) + α · d (4)
approximately and comparing it with PT . Let nk denote the (q) ∗
where d is a direction vector from n to n and α is a
number of subcarriers to be allocated for user k. Assuming that
distance from n(q) to n(q+1) . At the current solution n(q) , let us
nk can be relaxed to be a real number and that the channel
assume that (1 + t) constraints are active among the (1 + 2K)
gain on every subcarrier of user k is the same as the average
constraints in (3), i.e., 1T n = N and #S(n(q) ) = t, where
channel gain Hk , pk (nk ) can be calculated as (q) (q)
  S(n(q) ) = {k : nk = Rk or nk = 1, k = 1, 2, · · · , K} and
nk Rk #S denotes the cardinality of the set S. Then, the direction
pk (nk ) = f (2)
Hk nk vector d = [d1 , d2 , · · · , dK ]T at n(q) is obtained by projecting
where f (dk ) = Γ(2dk − 1) is the required power for a reliable the steepest descent direction onto the plane composed of the
reception of dk bits/subcarrier per symbol when the channel active constraints as
gain is unity and Γ is the SNR gap to account the reduction d = −W∇p(n(q) ) (5)
of SNR with respect to capacity. For M-QAM modulation, Γ
is defined as [7] where W is a K × K projection matrix determined
  2 by the active constraints and −∇p(n) is a K × 1
1 −1 SER
Γ= Q steepest descent direction vector given by ∇p(n) =
3 4
[ ∂n
∂
1
p1 (n1 ), ∂n
∂
2
p2 (n2 ), · · · , ∂n∂K pK (nK )]T . Denoting I and
where Q function is defined as ik an identity matrix of size K and a kth row of I, respectively,
 ∞ the projection matrix W in (5) is expressed as
1 2
Q(x) = √ e−t /2 dt
2π x W = I − CT [CCT ]−1 C (6)
and SER is the target symbol error rate. For a given K,
Preq =
K where C is (1 + t) × K matrix representing the (1 + t)
k=1 pk (nk ) is compared with PT and it is de-
cided that K users are supportable if Preq is smaller than constraints at n(q) , of which the first row is 1T and the other
PT . Since pk (nk ) is calculated approximately under the flat rows are ik (k ∈ S(n(q) )). Applying the vector multiplication
fading channel assumption without the subcarrier assignment and addition, (6) can be simplified as
and power allocation, there exists a difference between the 1
W = diag(w) − wT w (7)
estimated number of supportable users Ke and the maximum K −t
number of supportable users K ∗ which can be obtained by 
where w = 1T − k∈S(n(q) ) ik .
the adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithm.
Having determined the direction d at n(q) , the step size
III. S UPPORTABLE U SER S ET E STIMATION α is calculated using the fact that the slope of the objective
function at n∗ is zero. In order to determine α that ensures
For a given K in the supportable user set estima- n(q+1) will lie in the feasible set, let αk = {(Rk − 1)/|dk | +
tion, the number of subcarriers to be allocated to user (Rk − 2nk + 1)/dk }/2, (k ∈ / S(n(q) )), which represents a
k is determined in order to calculate the total re- distance from n(q) to the kth rate constraints in (3). Then,
quired power. Let n = [n1 , n2 , · · · , nK ]T and p(n) = the maximum step size αU from n(q) is determined as αU =
[p1 (n1 ), p2 (n2 ), · · · , pK (nK )]T be K × 1 vectors which rep- min αk . Given n(q) and αU , 1T p(n) in (3) is a function of α.
resent the number of allocated subcarriers and required power Defining g(α) = 1T p(n(q) + αd) to be the objective function
to transmit R = [R1 , R2 , · · · , RK ]T bits, respectively. Since at n(q) + αd, the slope of g(α) is given by
the required power function f (dk ) in (2) is convex, it can
be easily shown that the derivative of p(nk ) is nondecreasing d T
g  (α) = {1 p(n(q) + αd)} = ∇p(n(q) + αd)T d (8)
(p (nk ) ≥ 0) for nk > 0 and therefore p(nk ) is convex for dα
nk ≥ 0 [8]. Hence, Preq = 1T p(n) in (1) is convex for n ≥ 0 and the step size is determined as α = αU if g  (αU ) < 0. If
and n is obtained by solving a convex optimization problem g  (αU ) > 0, a simple bisection method is applied to find α as
with linear constraints shown in Fig. 2 since the minimum of 1T p is in the interval
min 1T p(n) [0, αU ].
Given the average channel gain Hk , the required data rate
s.t. 1T n = N (3)
R, and total available power PT , the number of supportable
1≤n≤R user Ke is obtained as follows.
where 1 is a column vector of size K with all entries equal Step 1) Set K = 2.
to one. Since (3) is formulated to calculate Preq , the optimal Step 2) Set n(0) = 1N T R R.

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 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 6, JUNE 2008 2047

g (a) = 1T p(n ( q ) + α d)
feasible region

g '(αU ) < 0
p '(n∗ ) ≈ 0 g '(0) > 0

n ( q ) + αU d n∗ n( q )

Fig. 2. Finding the step size of direction vector.

TABLE I
N UMBER OF OPERATIONS REQUIRED TO SOLVE (3)

Direction Step size α

Operation vector αU α
d (log2 √N times)
2
Function evaluation K K K
Comparison 2K K 1
Multiplication 2K 2 + K · 2K Fig. 3. Probability mass function of the difference between the estimated
Addition K 2 + (1 + t)K · K number of supportable users (Ke ) and the maximum number of supportable
users (K ∗ ).

Step 3) Update n(q) with power comparison

until n(q) converges.
Step 3a) If PT > Preq (n(q) ), K = K + 1 and
go to Step 2).
Step 3b) Update n(q+1) after setting
S(n(q) ) and determining d and α.
Step 4) Set Ke = K − 1.
For a given K, an initial value is set as n(0) =
N
[R1 R2 · · · RK ]T in the feasible set. After updating n(q) ,
1T R
the total required power Preq (n(q) ) is compared with PT and
K is increased if the available power is enough to support K
users. During the iterations, the proposed method can increase
K without finding the exact solution of (3) if Preq (n(q) ) is less
than PT in step 3) and this is more likely to happen in the
early iteration in which Preq (n(q) )  PT .
Table I shows the number of operations required to solve
(3) where  is an error threshold in the bisection method
[10]. Since the proposed method iterates min( K N
, K) times,
the order of the complexity to solve (3) is O(min( N K , K) ·
Klog2 √N2 ).
IV. S IMULATIONS
In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed user set
estimation, a downlink multi-user OFDM system comprising
of 32, 64, 128, and 256 subcarriers is considered. The path loss
exponent in the large scale fading and the standard deviation
of the log normal shadowing are set to 4 and 8dB, respectively,
and 3-path exponential delay profile is used for the frequency
selective fading channel. All the users located within 1km
radius from the base station have a different transmission data
rate Rk which is chosen randomly from 4, 8, 12, and 16
bits per OFDM symbol and assumed to be sorted according
to the priorities by the scheduler. The total available power
PT at the base station is adjusted to support 10, 20, 30, and
50 users when the number of subcarriers N is 32, 64, 128,
and 256, respectively, by which about 3 bits are allocated to
each subcarrier on the average. In calculating the required
power Preq , the SNR gap Γ is set to 2.5 which corresponds
to SER= 10−2 . In step 3), n(q) is determined to converge
if n(q+1) − n(q)  < 12 log2 N and the error threshold 
in the bisection method to calculate the step size is set to
0.01 × αU . For the modulation, square signal constellations
QPSK, 16-QAM, and 64-QAM are used to carry two, four,
or six bits/subcarrier. As an adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power
allocation algorithm, Bandwidth Assignment Based on Signal-
to-noise ratio (BABS) with Adaptive Craving Greedy (ACG)
in [4] followed by the greedy bit and power allocation in [1] is
adopted since BABS and ACG have a low complexity of order
O(KN ) and BABS can be used to solve (3) even though it
is a subcarrier assignment algorithm.
With the proposed user set estimation, the number of
supportable users Ke is obtained first by the proposed method
and then the adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation is
employed based on Ke as shown in Fig. 1. If PT is enough
to support Ke users, the base station generates and transmits
an OFDM signal. And if the allocation result shows that Ke
users can not be supported with PT , the allocation algorithm
is repeated until the number of supportable users is found after
dropping the user who has the lowest priority. Fig. 3 shows the
probability mass function (PMF) of the difference between K ∗
and Ke where the difference Δ is defined as Δ = K ∗ −Ke and
K ∗ is the maximum number of users that can be supported
with PT by the adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation
algorithm. Since Ke is obtained using the average channel gain
without the adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation, Ke
is usually lower than K ∗ as shown in Fig. 3. It can be found
that the probability that K ∗ is greater than Ke is larger than
0.965 (P r[Δ ≥ 0] ≥ 0.965) regardless of N and P r[Δ ≥ 0]
increases as N increases. When Ke is smaller than K ∗ , the
proposed method shows a performance loss because only Ke
users are supported even though PT is enough to support
K ∗ users. Fig. 4 shows the average number of supportable
users and transmission data rate per OFDM symbol with and
without the proposed method employed. Without employing

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 2048
the proposed method, the number of supportable users and the
transmission data rate are obtained directly by the adaptive
subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithm. When N is 32,
the average number of supportable users and transmission
data rate with and without employing the proposed method
do not show much differences because the subcarrier-bit-and-
power are not allocated effectively due to the small size of
N . However, as N increases, the optimal resource allocation
becomes more effective and P r[Δ > 0] increases as shown in
Fig. 3. Hence, the average number of supportable users and
the transmission data rate with the proposed method decreases
compared to those without the proposed method. When N is
256, it is shown that the average number of supportable users
is decreased by about 13 and the average transmission data rate
per OFDM symbol is decreased by 125 bits with the proposed
method employed.
As shown in Fig. 3, Ke can be greater than K ∗ if the
subcarrier-bit-and-power are not allocated effectively due to
the bad channel condition of the users and/or the assumption
that nk can be relaxed as a real value in (2). In Fig. 3, it can be
found that P r[Δ < 0] is 0.035, 0.011, 0.004, and 0.001 when
N is 32, 64, 128, and 256, respectively. In this case, since PT
is not enough to support Ke users, the adaptive subcarrier-
bit-and-power allocation process is repeated and therefore the
complexity reduction effect of the proposed method is re-
duced. In order to compare the complexity, the number of total
computations (function evaluation, comparison, multiplication,
and addition) required to obtain a feasible state (the number
of supportable users) from an initial state (Kini ) with and
without the proposed method employed is compared in Fig.
5, in which the ratio of total computations is calculated as
the number of total computations without the proposed method ×
the number of total computations with the proposed method
100. With the proposed method, not only the number of
total computations to obtain Ke but also the number of
total computations to find the number of supportable users
by repeating the resource allocation algorithm is counted.
Without the proposed method employed, the number of total
computations required to obtain K ∗ from Kini is counted. In
obtaining K ∗ , the required power Preq is calculated using the
adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithm and the
number of supportable users is decreased if Preq < PT until
K ∗ is found as in [5]. Since the number of total computations
without the proposed method is greatly affected by the initial
state Kini , Kini is set to Kmax = max K ∗ , the largest
value among the maximum number of supportable users (K ∗ s)
which are generated while evaluating the average number of
supportable users in Fig. 4. In Fig. 5, it is shown that the
ratio of the total computation is less than 20% regardless of
N , which means that only 20% of the total computations is
needed when the proposed method is employed in the adaptive
subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation. Also, we can find that
the proposed method provides the complexity reduction effect
even though the resource allocation process is repeated when
PT is not enough to support Ke users. This is because that
the repetition happens less than 4% of time and Ke is not
so far from K ∗ when Ke is greater than K ∗ as shown in
Fig. 3. Note that if the more effective (but more complex)
allocation algorithm such as MAO in [1], enhanced subcarrier
swapping in [6], or RCG in [4] is adopted as the adaptive
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 6, JUNE 2008
Fig. 4. Average number of supportable users and transmission data rate per
each OFDM symbol with and without the proposed method employed.
subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation algorithm, PMF of Δ in
Fig. 3 shifts to the right and the required number of total
computations is reduced even more by employing the proposed
method although a higher degradation in performance is the
price to be paid for this.
Since the proposed method completes the allocation process
and transmits the signal if PT is enough to support Ke users,
the transmission data rate and the number of supportable users
decrease with the proposed method as shown in Fig. 4. In order
to overcome this performance loss, Ke can be used as the
initial state (Kini ) instead of Kmax in the adaptive subcarrier-
bit-and-power allocation. Adopting Ke as Kini , the required
power Preq is obtained by the resource allocation algorithm
and the number of supportable users is increased if Preq < PT
and decreased if Preq > PT until K ∗ is determined. In Fig. 5,
the number of total computations required to obtain K ∗ from
Ke is compared to the number of total computations required
to obtain K ∗ from Kmax , in which the ratio is ∗calculated as
the number of total computations to obtain Ke and K (f rom Ke )
the number of total computations to obtain K ∗ f rom Kmax ×
100. It is shown that the number of computations is reduced by
50% as compared to the approach in [5]. Since the maximum
number of supportable users (K ∗ ) obtained from Ke is the
same as that obtained from Kmax , the average number of
supportable users and transmission data rate will be the same
as those without employing the proposed method in Fig. 4.
Hence, by using Ke as Kini , the proposed user set estimation
could be combined with the resource allocation algorithm
without the performance degradation while still providing the
complexity reduction effect.
In [4], BABS has been proposed as a part of the
subcarrier assignment algorithm but it can be used in the
proposed method in which n is determined by BABS
first and Preq is calculated from n in step 3). In Fig.
5, the required number of total computation to solve (3)
by the proposed method and BABS is also compared
in which the ratio of total computations is calculated as
the number of total computations to solve (3) by the proposed method
the number of total computations to solve (3) by BABS ×
100. Compared to BABS, the proposed method provides
more than 50% of the reduction which comes from the fact
that the proposed method tries to find n in the feasible set,
 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 7, NO. 6, JUNE 2008
Fig. 5. Ratio of total computations with and without the proposed method
employed.
hence min( KN
, K) iterations are not always needed to solve
(3) while BABS iterates N times with K function evaluations
and K comparisons in each iteration to obtain a feasible
solution n.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
This paper proposed the supportable user set estimation in
order to adopt the adaptive subcarrier-bit-and-power allocation
algorithms which assume that the number of supportable users
is given. In order to estimate the number of supportable users,
the amount of required power is calculated and compared
with the available power iteratively after determining the
number of subcarriers allocated to each user by solving a
linear constraint optimization problem. By solving the problem
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2049
using the standard direct search method in the feasible set, the
computational complexity to obtain the number of supportable
users is reduced. Numerical results show that the supportable
user set estimation reduces the allocation complexity signif-
icantly when it is combined with the adaptive subcarrier-bit-
and-power allocation algorithms.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank the Associate Editor and
the reviewers for their helpful comments and review. Their
suggestions greatly improved the presentation of this paper.
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