Optimal scheduling and power allocation in wireless networks with heavy traffic

This paper addresses the problem of joint transmit power allocation and time slot scheduling in a wireless communication system with time varying traffic. The system is handled by a single base station transmitting over time varying channels. This may be the case in practice of a hybrid TDMA-CDMA (Time Division Multiple Access-Code Division Multiple Access) system. The operating time horizon is divided into time slots; a fixed amount of power is available at each time slot. The users share each time slot and the power available at this time slot with the objective of minimizing the expected total queue length. The problem is reformulated, via a heavy traffic approximation, as the optimal control of a reflected diffusion in the positive orthant. We establish a closed form solution for the obtained control problem. The main feature that makes it possible is an astute choice of some auxiliary weighting matrices in the cost rate. The proposed solution relies also on the knowledge of the covariance matrix of the non-standard multi-dimensional Wiener process which is the driving process in the reflected diffusion. We then compute this covariance matrix given the stationary distribution of the multi-dimensional channel process. Further stochastic analysis is provided: the cost variance, and the Fokker–Planck equation for the distribution density of the queue length.