QoS-Aware Proportional Fair Packet Scheduling with Required Activity Detection

In this paper, a QoS-aware packet scheduler based on the proportional fair principle is proposed and studied. The new scheduler includes robust estimation of required scheduling activity for a user to meet the QoS requirements and takes into account the cell load and individual user conditions. A framework for distributing capacity between best-effort and QoS users is embedded in the scheduling algorithm. For a given QoS target and a WCDMA/HSDPA system, the scheduler provides around 40% user capacity gain compared to the well-known QoS-aware proportional fair scheduler based on barrier function scaling. While being better at guaranteeing QoS compared to the reference scheduler, it simultaneously provides orders of magnitude larger gain in what throughput is delivered to best- effort users in a mixed-service scenario. A main advantage of the scheduler is its simplicity and inherent robustness which makes it easy to configure in a multi-user/service environment.