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IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO.

6, JUNE 2009

461

Proportional Fair Multiuser Scheduling in LTE


Raymond Kwan, Cyril Leung, and Jie Zhang

AbstractThe challenge of scheduling user transmissions on the


downlink of a Long Term Evolution (LTE) cellular communication
system is addressed. A maximum rate algorithm which does not
consider fairness among users was proposed in [1]. Here, a multiuser scheduler with proportional fairness (PF) is proposed. Numerical results show that the proposed PF scheduler provides a superior fairness performance with a modest loss in throughput, as
long as the user average SINRs are fairly uniform. A suboptimal
PF scheduler is also proposed, which has a much lower complexity
at the cost of some throughput degradation.
Index TermsDigital communication, fading channels, radio
communication, scheduling.

block (SB). Each RB consists of 12 adjacent subcarriers with an


inter subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz.
(typically 12
An SB has a duration of 1 ms and consists of
or 14) OFDM symbols. Let be the total number of subcarriers
and
be the number of data-carrying subcarriers for
. Also, let
be the code
symbol , where
rate associated with Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS)
be the constellation size of the MCS and
be the OFDM symbol duration. Then, the bit rate, , that
corresponds to a single SB is given by
(1)

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.

II. SYSTEM MODEL


The LTE system model adopted is the one described in [1].
The main aspects are summarized as follows. The modulation
scheme is orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM).
In order to reduce signalling overhead, subcarriers are grouped
into resource blocks (RBs) [2], [3]. The scheduler allocates resources to users in quanta of two consecutive RBs; for convenience, we will refer to the two consecutive RBs as a scheduling

Let be the number of simultaneous users, and


be the
total number of SBs that are available during each Transmission
be a subset of the
Time Interval (TTI). In addition, let
SBs whose channel quality index (CQI) values are to be reported
back by user ; the size of
is denoted by
and determines
highest SB CQI
the feedback overhead. It is assumed that the
values are fed back.
be a real scalar or vector sent
Let
back by user to indicate the collective channel qualities of
all the subcarriers within the th reported SB. Furthermore, let
be the index of the highest-rate
MCS that can be supported by user for the -th SB at CQI
value
, i.e.,
.
For convenience, we assume that the MCS rate
increases monotonically with and that the rate of MCS 1 is
zero. SBs whose CQI values are not reported back are assigned
to MCS 1.
An important constraint in LTE downlink (non-MIMO configuration) scheduling is that all SBs allocated to a given user in
any given scheduling period have to use the same MCS. If MCS
is to be used for user , then only certain SBs can be assigned
, and
to the user. For example, suppose

(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

is used, only SBs


3 and 5
Then, if MCS
can be allocated to user since only these SBs have good enough
or
channel qualities to support an MCS index of
higher. Selecting SBs
1 or 2 with MCS
would result in unacceptably high error rates for these SBs. On
, all 4 SBs can be selected, at
the other hand, if
the expense of a lower bit rate for SBs 1, 3, and 5. Thus, there
is an optimal value of which maximizes the total bit rate for
user .

1070-9908/$25.00 2009 IEEE

462

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO. 6, JUNE 2009

III. SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS


In this section, a number of approaches to designing schedulers for the LTE downlink are discussed.

rate indices, one for each SB for user at time . The users
are then ranked according to their priority index values,

A. Single User Optimization


In single user optimization, the aim is to determine the MCS
(rate) index, and the set of SBs to be allocated to user so as
to maximize the assigned bit rate, , given the set of channel
.
qualities
Let
, and let
be the MCS vector for user
, where

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

Then the optimal MCS for user is

(11)
(7)

and the corresponding maximum bit rate is


SBs allocated to user is given by

. The set,

, of

(12)
The term

is given by
(13)

(8)

B. Multiuser Sequential Suboptimal Scheduling


The proposed suboptimal multiuser scheduler consists of
two stages. In the first stage, the scheduler determines the
set,
, of maximum

It is known that the PF scheduler is asymptotically optimal [4],


[6]. Other multi-user schedulers have been proposed in [7], [8].
In problem
,
is a binary decision variable, with value 1 if SB
and
is assigned to user and 0 otherwise. Problem
is

KWAN et al.: PROPORTIONAL FAIR MULTIUSER SCHEDULING IN LTE

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.

nonlinear due to the product


in (10). Although solutions can be obtained using optimization techniques such as
Branch-and-Bound [9], global optimality cannot be guaranteed.
can be transformed
To overcome this difficulty, Problem
by introducing an
into an equivalent linear problem
, i.e.,
auxiliary variable
(14)
subject to (4), (11), (12) and
(15)
(16)
(17)
where
is a large positive real value. Problem
can then
be solved using standard integer linear programming techniques
[9].
IV. NUMERICAL RESULTS
For illustration purposes, we assume
SBs per TTI,
subcarriers per SB,
and that the normal cyclic prefix configuration is used [2]. The
fading amplitude for each subcarrier of any user follows the
equal to 1.
Nakagami-m model [10], with a fading figure
It is assumed that the signal-to-interference plus noise ratios
(SINRs) for all subcarriers of any user are correlated, but identically distributed (c.i.d.), and that the resource blocks follow the
localized configuration [2]. The correlation coefficient between
, where and are the
a pair of subcarriers is given by
subcarrier indices.
For simplicity, the SINR of a given subcarrier is assumed to
be independent at every scheduling period, and constant within
a scheduling period. This independent assumption is reasonable for the purpose of comparing the long-term fairness for
the Max-Rate and PF schedulers. The set of MCSs consists of
QPSK 1/2 and 3/4, 16-QAM 1/2 and 3/4, as well as 64-QAM
3/4 [11], and the L1/L2 control channels are mapped to the first

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

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO. 6, JUNE 2009

Fig. 4. Fairness index as a function of  for three users with average SINRs of
10 dB, 15 dB, and 20 dB.

Fig. 6. Fairness index as a function of the number of users with 


average SINRs of 7 dB for all users.

= 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
:

SINRs are not effectively utilized, leading to a relatively poor


performance. It can also be seen that the bit rate for the jointly
optimal PF scheduler is almost as good as that for the jointly optimal Max-Rate scheduler. In comparison, the bit rates for the
sequential Max-Rate and PF schedulers are about 5% and 10%
lower. Fig. 2 shows that the fairness index, , is significantly
higher for the two PF schedulers than for their Max-Rate counterparts, indicating that the PF schedulers are quite effective in
promoting fairness among users.
Similar plots are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, for user average
SINRs of 10 dB, 15 dB, and 20 dB respectively. Here, the variation among user average SINRs is larger than in Figs. 1 and
2. Fig. 3 shows that there is now a larger gap between the bit
rates for the jointly optimal PF and Max-Rate schedulers. This
is due to the increased effort needed to maintain fairness. It can
be seen from Fig. 4 that the two PF schedulers provide significantly better user fairness than the Max-Rate schedulers.
The average total bit rate and fairness index are plotted as a
function of the number of users in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively,
with an average SINR of 7 dB for all users. In this case, the results show that the jointly optimized Max-rate and PF schedulers
provide similar performances. The sequential PF scheduler has

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