On fairness in LTE downlink MAC scheduling algorithms

A downlink MAC scheduler aims to improve the radio resources utilization in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) network. The MAC scheduler is responsible for sharing the available radio Resource Blocks (RBs) among different User Equipment (UEs) in time and frequency domains. Several downlink MAC schedulers have been proposed and implemented; however, providing fairness in terms of granting resources to different UEs with different QoS requirements remains a challenge. This paper presents the results of a comparative simulation study with respect to a fairness criterion for three well-known downlink schedulers.