Resource Allocation and Link Adaptation in LTE and LTE Advanced: A Tutorial

Resource allocation and link adaptation in Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE Advanced are discussed with focus on the location and formatting of the pertinent reference and control signals, as well as the decisions they enable. In particular, after reviewing the units for resource allocation and the time-frequency resource grid, the enabled resource-allocation modes and their purposes are reviewed. A detailed description of the way the resource allocations are encoded under these different modes is also given. Similarly, the various methods of link adaptation, including power control and rate control, both through the use of adaptive modulation and coding and hybrid automatic repeat request, are reviewed. The control signaling encoding for link adaptation is provided in detail, as is the encoding of channel state feedback for the purposes of link adaptation and resource allocation.