Bandwidth Allocation Under Multi-Level Service Guarantees of Downlink in the VLC-OFDM System

Abstract

In this paper, we explore a low-complex bandwidth allocation (BA) scheme with multi-level service guarantees in VLC-OFDM systems. Effective capacity theory, which evaluates wireless channel capacity from a novel view, is utilized to model the system capacity under delay QoS constraints of the link layer. Since intensity modulation of light is used in the system, problems caused by frequency selectivity can be neglected. Then, the BA problem can be formulated as an integer programming problem and it is further relaxed and transformed into a concave one. Lagrangian formulation is used to reformulate the concave problem. Considering the inefficiency of traditional gradient-based schemes and the demand for distributed implementation in local area networks, we localize the global parameters and propose a quasi-distributed quadratic allocation algorithm to provide two-level service guarantees, the first level is QoS oriented, and the second level is QoE oriented. Simulations have shown the efficient performance of the proposed algorithm. The users with more stringent QoS requirements require more subcarriers to guarantee their statistical delay QoS requirements. We also analyze the effect of subcarrier granularity on the aggregate effective capacity via simulations.