Downlink Scheduling Algorithms for Real-Time Multimedia Services in 3GPP LTE Mobile Networks

Abstract

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the fastest growing technologies which supports variety of applications like video conferencing, video streaming, VoIP, file transfer, web browsing etc. In order to support multiple applications, Radio Resource Management (RRM) procedure is one of the key design roles for improving the system performance. LTE system effectively utilizes the resources by dynamically scheduling the users in both frequency and time domain. However, scheduling algorithms are not defined in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications. Therefore, it becomes one of the special interests for service providers. In this paper a study of downlink scheduling algorithms for realtime multimedia services in 3GPP LTE mobile networks was carried out and some existing algorithms were carefully studied and analyzed. Six existing downlink scheduling algorithms were considered for this work. A summary of all the presented schemes was shown as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the schemes. It can be seen that all the schemes reviewed focuses only on Real-Time multimedia services therefore they don’t treat Non-Real Time services with utmost fairness