Channel quality dependent scheduling for flexible wireless resource management

In this paper, we propose a scheduling paradigm that gives cellular network operators greater flexibility in adjusting the way resources are allocated among interactive best-effort data users. This work is motivated by the unique characteristic of cellular networks, where users with different radio link qualities may deliver different amounts of data using the same amount of radio resource. In the context of link adaptation, we demonstrate how this characteristic complicates the fairness issue in cellular environments and has a profound impact on the overall system performance. We also show that, as a result, it becomes extremely appealing to adopt scheduling algorithms that are capable of allocating radio resource dynamically, not only based on channel conditions, but also to achieve different performance trade-offs among users with different link qualities. We present an efficiency-based scheduling algorithm which achieves this goal effectively. Simulation results from the efficiency-based scheduling algorithm provide some important guidelines for efficient resource allocation in cellular networks. In particular, we find that systems should be very cautious when trying to improve the performance of users with bad channel qualities, as it is more likely to degrade the performance of good channel users in a disproportionate manner. And in many cases, it is preferable to favor users with good channel qualities.