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I. INTRODUCTION
SCHEDULING algorithm for maximizing the throughput
on the downlink of a multiuser Long Term Evolution
(LTE) cellular communication system is studied in [1]. However, the issue of fairness among users was not addressed. In
this paper, we propose and compare two scheduling algorithms:
1) a maximum-rate scheduler which has similar throughput
performance to the algorithm in [1] but is simpler to implement
2) a proportional-rate scheduler intended to improve fairness
among users. This paper is not intended to provide comprehensive system-level simulation results. Rather, it examines some
scheduling schemes, focussing on how the physical resource
blocks are assigned. The results show that the PF scheduler
is effective in reducing variations in user bit rates with little
average bit rate degradation as long as user average SINRs are
fairly uniform.
(2)
Manuscript received October 12, 2008; revised January 26, 2009. Current
version published April 24, 2009. This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada under
Grant OGP0001731, by the UBC PMC-Sierra Professorship in Networking and
Communications, and by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. The
associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for
publication was Prof. Markku Renfors.
R. Kwan and J. Zhang are with the University of Bedfordshire, Luton LU1
3JU, U.K. (e-mail: raymond.kwan@beds.ac.uk; jie.zhang@beds.ac.uk).
C. Leung is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4 Canada (e-mail:
cleung@ece.ubc.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LSP.2009.2016449
462
rate indices, one for each SB for user at time . The users
are then ranked according to their priority index values,
The optimal , which maximizes the total bit rate for user , is
.
obtained by solving Problem
(3)
subject to
(4)
(5)
The formulation in (3) allows the selected bit rate for SB to be
less than what
can potentially support, as may be the case
if user is assigned more than one SB during a TTI. Constraint
(4) ensures that the MCS for user can only take on a single
.
value between 1 and
The above optimization problem can be easily solved as folbe an
matrix with
-th element
lows. Let
. Denote the sum of the
by
elements in the -th column of
(6)
(9)
is the average
where
bit rate up to time
, and
is the bit rate assigned to user at time . The first line in the RHS of (9) corresponds to proportional fair (PR) scheduling ([2, p. 113]), [4], [5],
whereas the second line corresponds to maximum rate schedis a function which returns the
uling ([2, p. 111]). The term
, as
highest bit rate that user can support based on
.
discussed in Section III-A, i.e.,
For notational convenience, let
be the ranked version of
, and
be a
function which maps the ordered user index back to the original user index . In the second stage, the allocation of resources
is done in a sequential fashion, one user at a time, according
. Thus, starting with
to the following user order:
user
, and the initial set of SBs,
, where
corresponds to the complete set of available SBs, the MCS
, are determined as described in
index and the set of SBs,
. The remaining SBs,
Section III-A, and assigned to user
, are then made available to user
.
The resource allocation process continues until all SBs have
been assigned.
C. Joint Optimization
To assess the effectiveness of the sequential scheduling algorithm in Section III.B, we now consider the joint optimization
of allocation of BSs and MCSs among all users. The joint optimization problem can be formulated as
(10)
subject to (4) and
(11)
(7)
. The set,
, of
(12)
The term
is given by
(13)
(8)
463
Fig. 1. Average total bit rate as a function of for three users with average
SINRs of 14 dB, 15 dB, and 16 dB.
Fig. 2. Fairness index as a function of for three users with average SINRs of
14 dB, 15 dB, and 16 dB.
Fig. 3. Average total bit rate as a function of for three users with average
SINRs of 10 dB, 15 dB, and 20 dB.
OFDM symbol within each subframe. Furthermore, each subframe consists of eight reference symbols [2]. The feedback
method is based on the Exponential Effective SINR Mapping
(EESM) [12], with parameter values obtained from [13].
be the total bit rate at time
Let
, and
be the corresponding value
channel realizations. Similarly, let
averaged over
be the average bit rate for user , and
be the Jains fairness index
[14] for the average user bit rates. The value of lies in the
; an value of 1 corresponds to all users having the
range
same average (over scheduling periods) bit rates.
, and fairFigs. 1 and 2 show the average total bit rate,
ness index, , as a function of for three users, with average user
SINRs of 14 dB, 15 dB, and 16 dB. It can be seen from Fig. 1
that the bit rates for all schedulers increase with . This can be
explained as follows. The motivation behind EESM is to map
, to a single effective SINR,
a set of subcarrier SINRs,
, in such a way that the block error probability (BLEP) due
to
can be well approximated by that at
in additive
white Gaussian noise (AWGN) [11], [12]. The value of tends
to be skewed towards the weaker subcarriers in order to maintain
an acceptable BLEP. At a low value of , subcarriers with large
464
Fig. 4. Fairness index as a function of for three users with average SINRs of
10 dB, 15 dB, and 20 dB.
= 0 9 and
:
a slightly lower throughput than the sequential Max-rate scheduler but a higher fairness index.
V. CONCLUSION
The bit rate and fairness characteristics of a Max-Rate and a
PF scheduler were studied. A jointly optimal as well as a simpler, suboptimal problem formulations were considered. It was
found that the PF scheduler is effective in reducing variations
in user bit rates with little average bit rate degradation relative
to the Max-Rate scheduler as long as user average SINRs are
fairly uniform.
REFERENCES
Fig. 5. Average total bit rate as a function of the number of users with
and average SINRs of 7 dB for all users.
=09
:
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