  To achieve high data rates and better connectivity in future communication
networks, the deployment of different types of access points (APs) is underway.
In order to limit human intervention and reduce costs, the APs are expected to
be equipped with self-organizing capabilities. Moreover, due to the spectrum
crunch, frequency reuse among the deployed APs is inevitable, aggravating the
problem of inter-cell interference (ICI). Therefore, ICI mitigation in
self-organizing networks (SONs) is commonly identified as a key radio resource
management mechanism to enhance performance in future communication networks.
With the aim of reducing ICI in a SON, this paper proposes a novel solution for
the uncoordinated channel and power allocation problems. Based on the
multi-player multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework, the proposed technique does
not require any communication or coordination between the APs. The case of
varying channel rewards across APs is considered. In contrast to previous work
on channel allocation using the MAB framework, APs are permitted to choose
multiple channels for transmission. Moreover, non-orthogonal multiple access
(NOMA) is used to allow multiple APs to access each channel simultaneously.
This results in an MAB model with varying channel rewards, multiple plays and
non-zero reward on collision. The proposed algorithm has an expected regret in
the order of O(log^2 T ), which is validated by simulation results. Extensive
numerical results also reveal that the proposed technique significantly
outperforms the well-known upper confidence bound (UCB) algorithm, by achieving
more than a twofold increase in the energy efficiency.
