QCI and QoS Aware Downlink Packet Scheduling Algorithms for Multi-Traffic Classes over 4G and beyond Wireless Networks

The recent advancements in wireless technologies and applications make downlink scheduling and resource allocation a hot topic of research. Hence, fair scheduling and balanced Quality of Service (QoS) delivery for different types of traffic (e.g., VoIP, video, and best-effort) are vital for next-generation wireless networks. In this paper, we analyze various downlink scheduling algorithms in terms of network-oriented performance parameters such as average throughput, system fairness, average packet loss ratio, and system spectral efficiency. In addition, we show the effect of the QoS Class Identifier (QCI) parameters on different delay-aware scheduling algorithms. Furthermore, we propose a group of algorithms to improve the existing Log-rule, Linear-rule, and Modified Largest Weighted Delay First (M-LWDF) scheduling strategies. This is achieved by including in the algorithms the QCI parameters in order to balance the QoS delivery for different traffic-classes with improvement to the overall system performance. Through simulation, we show that the proposed scheduling algorithms utilising the QCI and QoS parameters introduce improved QoS performance for different traffic classes (i.e., real-time (RT) and non-real-time (NRT)).