Performance Evaluation of Proportional Fairness Scheduling in MmWave Network

Millimeter wave (MmWave) is a promising technology nowadays because it provides users with ultra-high data rate links with low latency time. Hence, internet of things, tactile internet and cloud computing applications which becomes an essential matter in 5G networks can be supported using it. MmWave standard, IEEE 802.11 ad, proposed using scheduled medium access control (MAC) based on time division multiple access (TDMA) to share radio resources among active mmWave users. MmWave has a highly dynamic time-variant channel with high blocking probability which highly degrades the entire system performance. Hence, applying simple channel independent scheduling schemes, e.g., round robin (RR), will be inefficient. Thus, an efficient radio resource scheduling with considering the changes in mmWave channel is needed for maximum benefit from available resources. This paper presents the performance evaluation of one of the channel sensitive scheduling schemes, proportional fairness scheduling (PFS), in downlink mmWave network by executing numerical simulation in different channel conditions and various mmWave beamwidths regarding the total system data rate and fairness between users.