Fair and Efficient Scheduling of Variable Rate Links via a Spectrum Server

We consider a centralized Spectrum Server that coordinates the transmissions of a group of links sharing a common spectrum. Links employ on-off modulation with fixed transmit power when active. In the on state, a link obtains a data rate determined by the signal-to-interference ratio on the link. With knowledge of the link gains in the network, the spectrum server schedules the on/off periods of the links so as to satisfy constraints on link fairness and efficiency. We express fairness constraints as lower bounds on the average minimum rate for each link. Efficiency constraints are expressed as lower bounds on the ratio of the average rate to the average transmit power for each link. Subject to fairness and efficiency constraints, the spectrum server finds a schedule that maximizes the average sum rate. Using a graph theoretic model for the network and a linear programming formulation, the resulting schedules are a collection of time shared transmission modes (sets of active links). In the special case when there is no minimum rate constraint, varying the efficiency constraint can cause the optimal policy to vary from a fixed dominant mode with highest sum rate being operated all the time to time sharing among singleton modes in which just one link is active. We also address the case of maximum common rate scheduling under efficiency constraints. Simulation results are presented to substantiate our findings.