Mirroring LTE Scheduler Performance with an Adaptive Simulation Model

One of the key elements of radio resource management in mobile networks is MAC (Media Access Control) scheduling. The scheduling algorithms play a role in overall network performance and are not specified in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards. This paper describes how to assess the performance of a scheduler implementation by designing an adaptive algorithm that is both Quality of Service (QoS) and buffer aware, and considers the constraints defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The goal is not to design the best scheduler, but to be able to replicate different scheduling strategies. From a radio planning and optimization perspective, the results support the notion that an adaptive scheduler facilitates how LTE network performance is estimated in a wide variety of network configurations and environments.