Integrated Fractional Load and Packet Scheduling for OFDMA Systems

This paper study the performance of an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system under fractional load based in long term evolution (LTE) downlink. Fractional load is defined by a situation where only a fraction of the bandwidth is used for transmission due to lack of traffic. This type of situation should result in a global increase of signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) conditions in the network. We propose different methods integrating the transmission pattern selection to the packet scheduling functionality of the enode-B depending only on the channel quality indicator (CQI) reports from the user equipments. Fractional load handling is operated without inter eNode-B coordination. We conclude that the system can operate under fractional load conditions if the CQI is calculated with wideband interference. Further gain can be obtained if the CQI is calculated with local interference, however, in that case, it is necessary to inject a certain time correlation in the transmission patterns due to reporting delay.