Optimization of LTE radio resource block allocation for maritime channels

In this study, we describe the behavior of LTE over the sea and investigate the problem of radio resource block allocation in such SINR limited maritime channels. For simulations of such sea environment, we considered a network scenario of Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul, Turkey with different number of ships ferrying between two ports at a given time. After exploiting the network characteristics, we formulated and solved the radio resource allocation problem by max-min integer linear programming method. The radio resource allocation fairness in terms of Jain's fairness index was computed and it was compared with round robin and opportunistic methods. Results show that the max-min optimization method performs better than the opportunistic and round robin methods. This result in turn reflects that the max-min optimization method gives us the high minimum best throughput as compared to other two methods considering different ship density scenarios in the sea. Also, it was observed that as the number of ships begin to increase in the sea, the max-min method performs significantly better with good fairness as compared to the other two methods.