| This thesis addresses a problem at the nexus of communication theory, networking, and economics: how to allocate radio resources efficiently and fairly to support users' Quality of Service (QoS) requirements in wireless communication networks? Through a unified utility-based framework, we study resource allocation problems in both centrally controlled and distributed wireless networks, with an emphasis on users with elastic data traffic.In the first part of the thesis, we consider downlink scheduling in a centrally controlled cellular network. We explicitly take type II hybrid ARQ retransmission schemes into account, which have been proposed for next generation wireless communication standards. For some important cases, we characterize the optimal scheduling policies as fixed-priority policies, where the priorities can be explicitly calculated using an iterative algorithm. In some special cases, the priorities can even be calculated in closed form. We also show that a simple myopic scheduling policy, called the U'R rule, performs very close to the optimal scheduling policy in specific cases.In the second part of the thesis, we consider resource allocation in spectrum sharing models, which are motived by ongoing worldwide spectrum policy reform to promote distributed, efficient and in some cases market-based spectrum usage. We study two distinct models: the exclusive use model and the commons model. For the exclusive use model, we propose two simple auction mechanisms to allocate power among competing and selfish secondary users. We give sufficient conditions under which the auctions lead to socially optimal (efficient) resource allocations, and present an iterative algorithm which achieves those allocations in a distributed fashion. In the commons model, we design price-based mechanisms under which users cooperate with each other in a distributed manner. Both single carrier and multi-carrier networks are studied, and we use supermodular game theory and duality theory to show the convergence and study the properties of the proposed algorithms. Finally, we extend the discussion of the commons model to multi-hop wireless networks, where joint congestion control, scheduling, routing and power control is discussed. |
