Scheduling and Resource Allocation Strategy for OFDMA Systems Over Time-Varying Channels

A cross-layer scheduling and resource allocation (SRA) strategy for an adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) based orthogonal frequency multiple access (OFDMA) system is proposed. The objective of this paper is to maximize the system throughput as a function of the bit error rate (BER) and the spectral efficiency based on the selected modulation and coding schemes (MCSs). The proposed strategy contains two main algorithms. Firstly, the scheduling algorithm that aims to maximize the average system throughput by arranging the users in distinct queues according to their priorities and selecting the best user of each queue individually in order to guarantee a fair user service amongst different priority levels. Secondly, the resource allocation algorithm that allocates the user, bit and power based on the channel conditions of the scheduling users and the transmission power constraints. The transmitter of the investigated AMC-OFDMA system at the assigned base station (BS) divides the transmitted OFDMA frame into sub-channels and assigns each sub-channel to a scheduled user. In this paper, we compare the performance of the proposed SRA with the conventional first in first out (FIFO) queuing based scheduling and resource allocation strategies used for an AMC-OFDMA system. The simulation results show that the investigated AMC-OFDMA system based on the proposed SRA strategy outperforms the conventional approaches.