Joint Subcarrier and Power Allocation for Multi-User OFDM ISAC Systems

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is envisioned as a key enabling technology for 6G networks. Efficient resource sharing between communication and sensing is a fundamental challenge in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) ISAC systems, particularly in multi-user scenarios, where channel diversity can be exploited to improve resource utilization. This paper investigates joint subcarrier assignment and power allocation for a downlink multi-user OFDM ISAC system, with the objective of minimizing the delay Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) subject to constraints on the normalized integrated sidelobe level (ISL) over the region of interest (RoI), per-user data rates, and total transmit power. We first derive a convex formulation for sensing power allocation given fixed subcarrier assignments, and then develop an equivalent mixed-integer conic formulation of the joint optimization problem. To obtain computationally tractable solutions, we propose a conic relaxation-guided fix-and-optimize (CRG-FO) algorithm that integrates continuous relaxation, power re-optimization under fixed subcarrier assignments, and restricted neighborhood search. Simulation results demonstrate that joint subcarrier and power allocation reduces the distance CRLB relative to uniform subcarrier and power allocation across the tested ISL thresholds, rate loads, and user configurations. Power optimization on uniform sensing supports captures most of this gain, while adaptive subcarrier assignment provides only modest additional improvement.