A Decomposition of the Downlink Utility Maximization Problem

An alternative decomposition method for sum-utility maximization in the multi-user downlink is proposed. The proposed method is based on repeated local approximations of the Pareto efficient boundary of the rate region. Similar to known "layering as optimization" approaches, the utility maximization problem is vertically decomposed into a set of coupled sub-problems. Mathematically, however, the proposed method is not based on primal or dual decompositions, but on an optimization on manifolds.