Adaptive fair radio interface scheduling for LTE networks

The goal of advanced radio resource management procedures in 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) is to increase the spectral efficiency beyond an ever achieved level. This objective, however, should be realized by considering an optimal trade-off between system performance and fairness among the users. This work proposes an adaptive packet scheduling mechanism which provides higher spectral efficiency during the times of high system load and a better fairness when enough radio resources are available. The proposed scheme dynamically switches between the well-known Proportional Fair and Blind Equal Throughput scheduling schemes based on the congestion level at the radio interface. Moreover, this work also provides a sophisticated mechanism to estimate the radio interface congestion level to assist the operations of the proposed Adaptive Fair scheduling scheme. The proof of concept is provided with the help of simulation results where the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated at different radio interface congestion levels.