QoS-aware LTE-A downlink scheduling algorithm: A case study on edge users

Abstract

4G/LTE-A (Long-Term Evolution-Advanced) is the state of the art wireless mobile broadband technology. It allows users to take advantage of high Internet speeds. It makes use of the OFDM technology to offer high speed and provides the system resources both in time and frequency domain. A scheduling algorithm running on the base station holds the allocation of these resources. In this paper, we investigate the performance of existing downlink scheduling algorithms in two ways. First, we look at the performance of the algorithms in terms of throughput and fairness metrics. Second, we suggest a new QoS-aware fairness criterion, which accepts that the system is fair if it can provide the users with the network traffic speeds that they demand and evaluate the performance of the algorithms according to this metric. We also propose a new QoS-aware downlink scheduling algorithm (QuAS) according to these two metrics, which increases the QoS-fairness and overall throughput of the edge users without causing a significant degradation in overall system throughput when compared with other schedulers in the literature.