Advanced scheduling and admission control techniques for cellular packet radio networks

In this paper we analyze the performance of scheduling algorithms applied in the radio link control/medium access control (RLC/MAC) layer of the (E)GPRS base station subsystem (BSS). At first, scheduling algorithms are presented for an EGPRS best-effort service. While today's GPRS scheduler designs are based on the logical split between RLC and MAC, we propose to use information from the RLC layer for radio block scheduling on the MAC level. Additionally we propose the usage of information on the actual link quality for adaptive scheduling. The performance of the proposed algorithms is compared to that of basic implementations typical for today's GPRS networks. In the next step we introduce scheduling algorithms for the support of different traffic classes. Both priority scheduling and fair scheduling approaches are extended by adaptive scheduling concepts. The interworking with admission control in the serving GPRS support node (SGSN) is discussed and proposals for parameterization of the weights defined in the MAC scheduler and the maximum number of admitted flows for each traffic class in the admission control entity are presented.