Throughput-fairness tradeoff in LTE uplink scheduling algorithms

An uplink scheduler in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network has the objective to improve the radio resources utilization in the network. The choice of uplink scheduling procedure used impacts the throughputs of individual users, as well as the overall throughput of the cell. This paper evaluates and compares the performance of three well-known LTE uplink schedulers (namely, Maximum Throughput (MT), First Maximum Expansion (FME), and Round Robin (RR)) in terms of user's throughput and fairness. The performance evaluation of the schedulers is done through a simulation study using "LTE-Sim" simulator under realistic traffic conditions and varying several system parameters. The results indicate a clear trade-off between the throughput and fairness in assigning radio resources to a user.