Comparison of Strategies for Signaling of Scheduling Assignments in Wireless OFDMA

This paper considers the transmission of scheduling information in orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA)-based cellular communication systems such as the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) long-term evolution (LTE). These systems provide efficient usage of radio resources by allowing users to be dynamically scheduled in both frequency and time. This requires considerable amounts of scheduling information to be sent to the users. This paper compares two basic transmission strategies: transmitting a separate scheduling message to each user versus broadcasting a joint scheduling message to all users. Different scheduling granularities are considered, as are different scheduling algorithms. The schemes are evaluated in the context of the LTE downlink using multiuser system simulations, assuming a full-buffer situation. The results show that separate transmission of the scheduling information requires a slightly lower overhead than joint broadcasting when proportional fair scheduling is employed and the users are spread out over the cell area. The results also indicate that the scheduling granularity standardized for LTE provides a good tradeoff between scheduling granularity and overhead.