Analysis of cellular mobile networks using fair throughput scheduling

Providing quality of service in broadband wireless access systems is an important issue. Fair throughput scheduling is one scheduling algorithm that is able to guarantee equal throughput in the long term for all users within one cell by allocating a resource to the user with the lowest throughput averaged over a past interval. The throughput that can be obtained by a user depends on the signal to interference plus noise ratio achieved by the users within the cell. Usually, system level simulations are necessary to get results on the user throughput for a specific cell layout, user distribution and the scheduling algorithm. This paper presents an analytical performance analysis for cellular systems using fair throughput scheduling. Derivations are presented for the number of allocated resources and the user throughput that can be achieved at a certain position within the network as well as the cell throughput that can be obtained. The investigation can be done for arbitrary user distributions and different network layouts. Results from system level simulations show that the analytical estimates achieve good accuracy with only a fraction of the computational complexity compared to a system level simulation.