Dynamic packet scheduling performance in UTRA Long Term Evolution downlink

In this paper we evaluate the performance of dynamic Packet Scheduling (PS) of 3GPP UTRAN Long Term Evolution (LTE) Downlink. Packet scheduling is of utmost importance in 3G LTE, because all traffic types with different Quality of Service requirements are competing of the resources. We present a decoupled time and frequency domain packet scheduling framework for LTE downlink. Simulation results with three basic packet scheduler combinations with different amount of fairness are presented in four different 3GPP macro simulation cases to show the both extremes in tradeoff between fairness and spectral efficiency. In addition, the effect of multiuser diversity on packet scheduling performance is studied. It is shown that by dividing the packet scheduler into a time domain and a frequency domain and utilizing different algorithms in both domains, the throughput fairness between users can be effectively controlled.