LTE uplink scheduling algorithms: Performance and challenges

LTE uses the SC-FDMA radio access technology for its uplink transmission. As a result, resources assigned to the same user must be contiguous in the frequency domain. Several uplink scheduling algorithms were proposed in the literature to fit that constraint. These algorithms take as input a matrix which is used by the Packet Scheduler for an efficient resource allocation. The performance of these algorithms is affected by the paradigm that is used to construct that matrix. Two main paradigms exist in the literature, channel dependent and proportional fairness. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of some LTE uplink scheduling algorithms for both channel dependent and proportional fairness paradigms. As a result, we identify the weaknesses of the existing paradigms and define some challenges for future enhancement.