An optimization framework for balancing throughput and fairness in wireless networks with QoS support

Quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning, high system throughput, and fairness assurance are indispensable for heterogeneous traffic in future wireless broadband networks. With limited radio resources, increasing system throughput and maintaining fairness are conflicting performance metrics, leading to a natural tradeoff between these two measures. Balancing system throughput and fairness is desired. In this paper, we consider an interference-limited wireless network, and derive a generic optimization framework to obtain an optimal relationship of system throughput and fairness with QoS support and efficient resource utilization, by introducing the bargaining floor. From the relationship curve, different degrees of performance tradeoff between throughput and fairness can be obtained by choosing different bargaining floors. In addition, our framework facilitates call admission control to effectively guarantee QoS of multimedia traffic. The solutions of resource allocation obtained from the optimization framework achieve the Pareto Optimality, demonstrating efficient use of network resources.