Energy-efficiency region for multiple access

channels
Guanding Yu and Yuhuan Jiang
To investigate the trade-off between energy efciency (EE) and spectral efciency (SE) for Gaussian multiple access channels (MACs), a
novel concept of the EE region is developed. The EE region for the
time division multiple access system is also derived and compared.
The SEEE trade-off order is introduced to explicitly describe how
fast the EE decays with SE in the high SE region. For a symmetric
MAC, a constraint on SEEE trade-off orders is derived and the
Pareto optimum can be achieved by the corner points on the EE region.

Introduction: For decades, providing high spectral efciency (SE) was

the most important goal for the designing of wireless communication
systems. However, recently energy efciency (EE) has become increasingly important from the point of view of both network operators and
mobile users. The benets of high EE include expenditure reduction
for operators, prolonging the battery life for mobile terminals, protecting
the environment etc. [1, 2].
However, achieving both high SE and EE are conicting according to
the Shannon information theory [3]. For a point-to-point additive white
Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, the exact expression connecting these
two criteria has already been derived. However, for the multiuser
channel scenario, the problem of understanding the SEEE trade-off
remains open. There are basically three fundamental trade-offs in multiuser systems: the SE trade-off among users, the EE trade-off among
users and the trade-off between SE and EE for a particular user.
These trade-offs make the problem much more complicated. Recent
works have only focused on part of these trade-offs for practical
systems [4].
In this Letter, the fundamental SEEE trade-off in a Gaussian multiple access channel (MAC) is investigated. The MAC is the only multiuser channel model whose capacity region is already known. The
concept of the EE region is introduced. Similar to the capacity region,
which characterises the SE trade-off among users, the EE region is
devoted to providing a viewpoint on the trade-off of EEs among users.

or SEs of different users and this trade-off is characterised by the

capacity region. Apparently, we can conjecture that there is also a
trade-off between the EEs of different users, which means that the EE
of one user will decrease as the EEs of other users increase. This kind
of trade-off is depicted by the EE region.
The second implication is the SEEE trade-off for a particular user.
For user k, its SEEE trade-off is related with other users SE and EE,
i.e. i and ei , i k. If we consider the two-user MAC and assume the
SE and EE of user 2 are given, then the relationship of EE and SE for
user 1 can be written as

h1
h
,
0 e2 h h2
2h1 1
2 1 (2 2 1)
e1 (e2 , h1 , h2 ) =
h1
h2
h

h +h
,
, e2 h 2
2 1 2 (1 + (h2 /e2 )) 2h1 (2h2 1)
2 2 1
(5)
In (5), through some simple analysis, it is easy to see that e1 decreases
with 1, which is the same as the single user case. Moreover, e1 is also a
non-increasing function of either e2 or 2. To illustrate these results, the
derivation
of e1 on
e2 (2) is  given in the case that

h2 /2h1 (2h2 1) , e2 h2 /(2h2 1) , as

h
2h 1

(7)

h2 = 0.5
0.9
e1

h2 = 0.3
h2 = 0.1

0.8

0.7

(2)

This is the well-known SEEE trade-off for the point-to-point AWGN

channel. It shows that the EE is a monotonically decreasing function
of SE, which indicates that one cannot achieve both high SE and high
EE simultaneously.
The expression of the SE and EE trade-off can be extended into the
Gaussian MAC. The capacity region for the Gaussian MAC is given
as a convex region restricted by the following inequalities [3]:





Pi
Ri W log2 1 + i[S
, S , {1, 2, . . . , K} (3)
N0 W
i[S

e1
2h1 +h2 ln 2 (1/e2 )
= h1

2
h
h2
2 1 +h2 1 + (h2 /e2 )

1.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

e2

a
1.0

0.9
e2 = 1
e1

e=

(6)

With simple mathematical analysis, it can be proved that both derivations are negative within their domains. This indicates that the EE
of one user will decrease if the other user wants to increase its EE or
SE. The same result for the SE of user 1, i.e. 1, can be revealed in a
similar way. Therefore, the SEEE trade-off of one user depends on
the other users SE and EE. Fig. 1 gives an illustration of the SEEE
trade-off for the two-user MAC.

EE region for Gaussian MAC channel: The capacity of a band-limited

AWGN channel is given as [3]



P
(1)
R = W log2 1 +
N0 W
where W is the bandwidth, P is the transmit power and N0 is the noise.
In what follows, N0 is assumed to be 1 for simplicity. Dene the SE as
= R/W, which stands for the supported bit rate per unit bandwidth and
the EE, e = R/P, as the transmitted bit for a given amount of energy (in
the unit of bits/Joule), then (1) can be rewritten as


h1 h2 /e22
e1
=

2
e2
2h1 +h2 1 + (h2 /e2 )

e2 = 0.85

0.8

e2 = 0.7
e2 = 0.65

0.7

where K is the number of users and Pi and Ri correspond to the transmit

power and rate of user i, respectively. Similar to the single user case, the
SE and EE of user i can be dened as i = Ri/W and ei = Ri /Pi , respectively. Substituting these notations into the above inequalities, the EE
region for the Gaussian MAC can be derived as

h
i
2 i[S hi 1, S , {1, 2, . . . , K}
(4)
e
i[S i


Fig. 1 Relationship between e1 and e2 h2 , 1 = 1
a Relationship between e1 and e2
b Relationship between e1 and 2

There are two fundamental and signicant implications suggested

by the EE region. The rst implication is instinctive, which gives the
trade-off between EEs. There exists a trade-off between the data rates

EE region for time division multiple access (TDMA) system: For the
TDMA system, assuming iT as the time share allocated for user i,

0.6
0

0.1

0.2

0.3
h2

0.4

0.5

0.6

ELECTRONICS LETTERS 19th June 2014 Vol. 50 No. 13 pp. 959961

the achievable rate region is [3]



Pi
(R1 , . . . , RK )|Ri ai W log2 1 +
WN0
(a , ..., a )
1

K


ai = 1, ai 0,

Lemma: Dene set d0 = {1, 2, , K} and d is any permutation of d0, then

d is a Pareto optimal set which satises (11). It means that if d satises
(11) and di , di , then there must exist an index j that dj . dj .
(8)

i = 1, 2, . . . , K

i=1

The denitions of SE and EE can be rewritten as i = Ri/W and

ei = Ri /ai Pi in this case, respectively. Substituting these denitions
into (8), we have the EE region for the TDMA system


h

(e1 , . . . , eK )|ei
(h /ai )
ai 2 i i 1
(a1 , ..., aK )
(9)

K

ai = 1, ai 0, i = 1, 2, . . . , K
i=1

The EE region for the two-user TDMA system is depicted in Fig. 2.

There exists an intersection point of the two curves. When i = (i/(1
+ 2)), i = 1, 2, the EE trade-off point
system

for the TDMA

 is the
same as for the MAC, i.e. e1 = e2 = h1 + h2 / 2h1 +h2 1 .

Then, the achievable EE of the ith user is

ei =

h
(2h 1)2(i1)h

(14)

Rewrite (14) into logarithmic form as

log2 ei = log2 h (i 1)h log2 (2h 1)

(15)

Then, we can easily calculate the trade-off order of the ith user as d = i.
According to the Lemma, the corner points on the EE region are exactly
the Pareto optimal points.
Another special point on the EE region is the symmetric EE point,
where the EEs of all users are equal, i.e. ei = e, i. In this case, we have

1.0
0.8
e2

The proof is rather intuitive. If a vector d satises (11) and

d1 d2 dK , then d1 1, d2 2, , dK K. Hence, d0 = {1,
2, , K} is the Pareto optimal set.
The corner points on the capacity region given in (3) depend on the
decoding order. We can obtain a corner point by assuming the decoding
order of K, K 1, , 1, that is, user K is decoded rst and user 1 is
decoded last. Owing to symmetry, the other corner points can be
obtained by simple permutation operation.
Accordingly, the corner point on the EE region is given as


h
h
h
,
.
.
.
,
,
(13)
2h 1 (2h 1)2h
(2h 1)2(N 1)h

0.6

0.4
0.2

Kh
2K h 1

and the SEEE trade-off order di = d = K, i. This means that the

symmetric EE point is not the Pareto optimal one in the viewpoint of
SEEE trade-off order.

EE region for Gaussian MAC

EE region for TDMA

0
0

0.2

0.4

0.6
e1

0.8

1.0

Fig. 2 EE region for two-user TDMA system, 1 = 2 = 1

SEEE trade-off order: It is well known that the EE decays with the SE.
However, the speed of the decay is another important problem which
requires further investigation. We develop the concept of the SEEE
trade-off order to characterise the decay rate of the EE with increasing
SE, which is dened as
d = lim

h1

log2 e
h

(10)

Conclusion: In this Letter, the novel concept of the EE region is developed for the Gaussian MAC to characterise the EE trade-off among
users. The EE region presents an alternative interpretation of the
capacity region. Based on the EE region, the SEEE trade-off for
each user in the two-user MAC is derived. It is seen that the EE of
one user decreases with the SE or EE of the other user. The EE
region for TDMA is also derived and compared. Then, another novel
concept of the SEEE trade-off order is introduced to characterise the
decay rate of EE. For the symmetric MAC, a constraint on SEEE
trade-off orders is given. Some special points on the EE region are
also studied and it is proved that the corner points can achieve the
Pareto optimum.

For Gaussian AWGN with the SEEE relationship shown in (2), the
trade-off order d = 1. However, for multiuser channels, it is hard to calculate the trade-off order since EEs depend on the SEs of different users.
However, we can look into the symmetric case, in which the SE of each
user is identical, i.e. i = , i.

Acknowledgment: This work has been supported by the National Basic

Research Program of China (973 Program) (no. 2012CB316006).

Theorem 1: For the symmetric Gaussian MAC, the SEEE trade-off

order of each user, di, should satisfy

Guanding Yu and Yuhuan Jiang (Department of Information Science

and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Peoples
Republic of China)

max di |S|,
i[S

S , {1, 2, . . . , K}

(11)

Proof: According to the denition of the SEEE trade-off order, the EE

scales as ei  2di h . Inserting this into (4), we have

h2di h 2|S|h 1, S , {1, 2, . . . , K}
(12)
i[S

As goes innite, we have



h2di h  2maxi[S di h

i[S

Therefore, (12) is equivalent to (11).

The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2014

15 November 2013
doi: 10.1049/el.2013.3798

E-mail: yuguanding@zju.edu.cn
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ELECTRONICS LETTERS 19th June 2014 Vol. 50 No. 13 pp. 959961