Packet Scheduling in 4G and Beyond Networks Using Cross-Layer Design Approach

The fourth generation (4G) and beyond networks are designed to provide high transmission rates, low latency and spectrum efficient radio access to a rapidly growing number of mobile devices. There are varying traffic demands with different quality of service (QoS) requirements from different set of evolving mobile devices. The optimal and efficient way to use radio resources remains a critical area of study to cover the exponential growth of network services. It is therefore very important to design an effective packet scheduling scheme that will provide a good trade-off among throughput, fairness and QoS. This paper proposes a cross-layer based packet scheduling scheme that will efficiently allocate radio resources to achieve maximal throughput and spectral efficiency without serious compromise to QoS and fairness. A heuristic approach to develop the algorithm is detailed out together with simulation setup and results.