Channel quality aware active queue management in cellular networks

Queue management plays an important role in the performance of IP based networks and cellular networks in particular where large buffers are often deployed in order to absorb bursts resulting from the dynamic nature of the radio channel. Long standing queues building up in large buffers leads to “Bufferbloat”, degrading the performance especially for delay-sensitive applications while small buffers may lower the link utilization. This paper proposes a novel Active Queue Management (AQM) algorithm tailored to cellular networks, mainly by utilizing the Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) periodically reported by user equipment, in order to mitigate Bufferbloat and maintain acceptable levels of performance. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the average queuing delay of packets for each user by 40% on average with TCP traffic compared with the CoDel algorithm which has recently become popular.