Distributed dynamic resource allocation for multi-cell PLC networks

Abstract

Based on the available power line structure, a PLC network is configured as a multiple cells network, including several adjacent access and in-home cells. In a PLC cell, the users are not moving but their statuses and traffic demands are changing during the run-time. These cells may interference with each other; therefore, each cell has a fixed amount of transmission capacity for its transmissions. The transmission capacity is defined as a set of channels. Since the active users and traffic demands in each cell are variable, the users in different cells may get different amount of resource for their transmission. This situation leads to the problem of unfairness between users. Furthermore, when the cells are not interfering, they can use the same channels for their parallel transmissions. The overall multi-cell structure may also change dynamically due to the activation and deactivation of some cells, which requires a method for re-arranging the allocated channels between the working cells. Therefore, a method which allows the dynamic sharing of the transmission capacity between the cells is required. In this paper, we propose a negotiation strategy to allow the cells to cooperate and dynamically share the channels in a distributed fashion. The negotiation strategy is based on two procedures, seizing the channels if they are free and releasing channels if a cell has more channels per user than its neighbors. The proposal is analyzed and several aspects are discussed in this paper.