A Minimal Delay Violation downlink LTE scheduler

Abstract

Mobile communications and the accompanying demand for real-time services are growing rapidly. Dynamic resource allocation is required in technologies such as long-term evolution (LTE) and 5G to ensure fair and efficient resource usage. However, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) does not impose a scheduling algorithm to assign those resources, leading to a vast body of downlink schedulers, each focusing on different aspects, such as throughput, packet loss ratio, energy efficiency etc. In this paper, we propose a new scheduler that aims to minimize delay violations, while maintaining a good throughput. The scheduler is based on a digital subscriber line (DSL) resource allocation mechanism, and uses the arrival rate together with the state of the flows and the network. We compare the scheduler to other schedulers from literature and observe that the proposed scheduler achieves a lower packet loss ratio (PLR) than the other schedulers, while maintaining a system high throughput.