Scheduling and quality of service in the General Packet Radio Service

Scheduling is an important aspect in the support of QoS in GPRS. Scheduling in GPRS is different from scheduling in ATM due to the existence of the MAC protocol, multi-slot capability restriction, and difference in QoS requirements. Two scheduling algorithms, the static priority scheduling (SPS) and modified earliest deadline (MED), have been analyzed. Both scheduling algorithms allow GPRS to attain high channel utilization, with MED performing slightly better than SPS. Queue lengths and normalized frame scheduling advance are two possible congestion metrics available from the scheduler, with the latter being more versatile across a variety of traffic statistics and system bandwidth.