Joint resource allocation and user association for multi-cell integrated sensing and communication systems

Abstract The densification of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based fifth-generation communication systems, as well as the requirement of integrating sensing and communication functionalities, has promoted the development of integrated-sensing-and-communication (ISAC) dense cellular networks (DCNs). In the OFDM-based ISAC-DCN, multiple base stations simultaneously serve mobile users and sense targets based on the echo of downlink communication signals. In this paper, we establish the interference model in ISAC-DCN for sensing and communication. Focusing on the interference management of the ISAC-DCN, we investigate the multi-dimension resource allocation problem. In particular, we aim to maximize the network utility by jointly optimizing sub-band allocation, user association, and transmission power under the sensing signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio constraint to be solved iteratively. The mixed-integer optimization problem is decoupled into three sub-problems. Specifically, a greedy genetic sub-band allocation scheme is proposed for sub-band allocation to reduce total interference. We employ the successive convex approximation technique to transform the transmission power control sub-problem and solve it via geometric programming. Simulation results illustrate the trade-off between sensing and communication performances, and show that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the network utility and achieves higher detection probability.