Comparing different LTE scheduling schemes

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is a cellular technology developed to support diversity of data traffic at potentially high rates. 3GPP´s LTE is defined by the standardization body´s Release 8 and 9. A key mechanism in the LTE traffic handling is the packet scheduler, which is in charge of allocating resources to active flows in both the frequency and time dimension. The scheduling scheme used largely impacts the throughput of individual users as well as throughput of the cell. It is worthwhile to evaluate the throughput and fairness conditions for different scheduling schemes before the actual deployment of LTE scheduler. Our main contribution in this study is to evaluate and compare the performance of six scheduling schemes designed for LTE network in terms of user´s throughput and fairness. The findings from our performance evaluation presented to draw conclusions on the performance of the six schedulers, and point out the strengths and weakness that are common to schedulers under study. This would help design the scheme of the scheduler at the eNodeB appropriately.