Adaptive Transmission Bandwidth Based Packet Scheduling for LTE Uplink

UTRAN long term evolution is currently under standardization within 3GPP with the aim of providing a spectral efficiency 2 to 4 times higher than its predecessor HSUPA/HSDPA release 6. Single carrier FDMA has been selected as multiple access for the uplink. This technology requires the subcarriers allocated to a single user to be adjacent. The consequence is a reduced allocation flexibility which makes it challenging to design effective packet scheduling algorithms. This paper proposes a channel aware packet scheduling algorithm which exploits the bandwidth flexibility offered by the system to perform an allocation which closely resembles the frequency domain envelope of the metric to be optimized. Compared to a fixed bandwidth approach, the proposed algorithm provides a greater flexibility given the inbuilt adaptation to different scenarios and loads, as well as an improvement in term of performance for the Macro 3 case. In this case the uplink capacity is increased by approximately 20% in average cell throughput and 10% in UE outage compared to a fixed bandwidth channel aware approach.