Power Allocation for Multi-Access Channel with Generalized Power Constraint

Abstract: We study the problem of decentralized power allocation in a multi-access channel (MAC) with non-cooperative users, additive noise of arbitrary distribution and a generalized power constraint, i.e., the transmit power constraint is modeled by an upper bound on $\mathbb{E}[\phi(|S|)]$, where $S$ is the transmit signal and $\phi(.)$ is some non-negative, increasing and bounded function. The generalized power constraint captures the notion of power for different wireless signals such as RF, optical, acoustic, etc. We derive the optimal power allocation policy when there a large number of non-cooperative users in the MAC. Further, we show that, once the number of users in the MAC crosses a finite threshold, the proposed power allocation policy of all users is optimal and remains invariant irrespective of the actual number of users. We derive the above results under the condition that the entropy power of the MAC, $e^{2h(S)+c}$, is strictly convex, where $h(S)$ is the maximum achievable entropy of the transmit signal and $c$ is a finite constant corresponding to the entropy of the additive noise.