Systems and methods for DOCSIS profile management

1. A method of optimizing a set of downstream modulation profiles for a downstream transmission over an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) channel to a population of user devices, the downstream transmission including a plurality of active sub carriers, comprising the steps of:

receiving channel measurement data from each user device of the population for each of the plurality of subcarriers;

calculating, from the received channel measurement data, a maximum bit-loading value for each user device per active subcarrier;

grouping individual ones of the user devices into a plurality of N clusters based on a proximity of the maximum bit-loading values of a first user device within a particular cluster to the maximum bit-loading values of a second user device within the particular cluster;

assigning each individual user device within the particular cluster to a single cluster modulation profile, wherein a plurality of single cluster modulation profiles for the plurality of N clusters forms a set of N cluster modulation profiles;

determining a channel capacity metric for each particular cluster of the set of N cluster modulation profiles;

coalescing, based on the step of determining, at least two single cluster modulation profiles of the set of N cluster modulation profiles into a coalesced profile pair; and

transmitting the plurality of active subcarriers to the population of user devices using N−1 or fewer cluster modulation profiles.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the downstream transmission comprises a DOCSIS format.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein at least one single cluster modulation profile of the plurality of single cluster modulation profiles comprises a unicast transmission profile.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein, in the step of grouping, the proximity is determined according to a mathematical distance metric including one or more of an L1 norm, an L2 norm, and a Mahalanobis distance.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein, in the step of grouping, the proximity comprises a difference between the calculated bit-loading value and a mean of the particular cluster.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein the step of grouping comprises a substep of reassigning a calculated bit-loading value from the particular cluster to a different cluster based on the proximity of the calculated bit-loading value to a mean of the different cluster being less than the proximity of the calculated bit-loading value to the mean of the particular cluster.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of calculating comprises a substep of generating a matrix for the received channel measurement data.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the generated matrix is an N×N SC matrix, where N is the number of user devices in the population, and N SC is the number of active subcarriers in the channel.

9. The method of claim 8 , wherein rows of the generated matrix represent bit-loading capability vectors of user devices, and the step of grouping is based on user devices having similar bit-loading capability vectors within the generated matrix.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the step of assigning comprises a sub step of finding within the generated matrix a minimum bit-loading capability vector of the particular cluster.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of determining comprises a substep of evaluating each possible combination of single cluster profiles within the set of cluster profiles as a pair of two cluster profiles, and wherein the step of combining comprises a substep of selecting an evaluated pair having the highest channel capacity metric value as a coalesced profile pair.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the steps of determining and combining are repeated using a profile of the coalesced profile pair as a single cluster profile within the set of cluster profiles.