Utility Fair Rate Allocation in LTE/802.11 Networks

We consider proportional fair rate allocation in a heterogeneous network with a mix of LTE and 802.11 cells which supports multipath and multihomed operation (simultaneous connection of a user device to multiple LTE BSs and 802.11 APs). We show that the utility fair optimisation problem is non-convex but that a global optimum can be found by solving a sequence of convex optimisations in a distributed fashion. The result is a principled approach to offload from LTE to 802.11 and for exploiting LTE/802.11 path diversity to meet user traffic demands.