Joint utility-based power control and receive beamforming in decentralized wireless networks

This paper addresses the problem of joint resource allocation in general wireless networks and its practical implementation aspects. The objective is to allocate transmit powers and receive beamformers to the users in order to maximize a network-wide utility that represents the attained QoS and is a function of the signal-to-interference ratios. This problem is much more intricate than the corresponding QoS-based power control problem. In particular, it is not known which class of utility functions allows for a convex formulation of this problem. In case of perfect synchronization, the joint power and receiver control problem can be reformulated as a power control problem under optimal receivers. Standard gradient projection methods can be applied to solve this problem. However, these algorithms are not applicable in decentralized wireless networks. Therefore, we decompose the problem and propose a convergent alternate optimization that is amenable to distributed implementation. In addition, in real-world networks noisy measurements and estimations occur. Thus, the proposed algorithm has to be investigated in the framework of stochastic approximation. We discuss practical implementation aspects of the proposed stochastic algorithm and investigate its convergence properties by simulations.