Downlink scheduling for CDMA packet data systems with interference cancellation

We propose a downlink packet scheduling algorithm for cells of multi-rate CDMA networks in the presence of a limited interference cancellation (IC) capability at the mobile units with in-cell transmission power and out-of-cell interference limitations. By targeting the most interfering transmissions within the adjacent sectors for suppression, we show that proper combination of scheduling and IC can significantly enhance the performance of CDMA packet data downlinks both in terms of fairness and throughput, thereby, reducing queueing and transmission delays. With a limited IC capability of about 70%, results show that fairness to distant mobiles can be ensured with a per-user throughput twice as high as the throughput obtained when IC is not combined with scheduling.