Uplink packet scheduling in cellular networks with relaying—comparative study

Deployment of intermediate relay nodes in cellular networks, e.g. UMTS/ HSPA, has been proposed for service enhancement, which is of particular importance for uplink users at the cell edge suffering from low power capacity and relatively poor channel conditions. In this paper, we propose and investigate a number of uplink packet scheduling schemes deploying the relay functionality in different ways. Using a combined packet and flow level analysis capturing the specifics of the scheduling schemes and the random behavior of the users (initiation and completion of flow transfers), the performance of the various schemes is evaluated and compared to a reference scenario where relaying is not used. The main performance measures considered in our study are realized data rates and mean flow transfer times. Interestingly, considering flow transfer times, it is found that the use of relay nodes is not only particularly beneficial for users at the cell edge but also has a strong, positive effect on the performance of users at other locations not transmitting via a relay node

Performance Analysis of Uplink Packet Schedulers in Cellular Networks with Relaying

Deployment of intermediate relay nodes in cellular networks, e,g, UMTS/ HSPA, has been proposed for service enhancement, which is of particular importance for uplink users at the cell edge suffering from low power capacity and relatively poor channel conditions. In this paper, we propose and investigate a number of uplink packet scheduling schemes deploying the relay functionality in different ways. Using a combined packet and flow level analysis capturing the specifics of the scheduling schemes and the random behavior of the users (initiation and completion of flow transfers), the performance of the various schemes is evaluated and compared to a reference scenario where relaying is not used. The main performance measures considered in our study are the instantaneous data rate, the energy consumption and the mean flow transfer time. Interestingly, considering flow transfer times, it is found that the use of relay nodes is not only particularly beneficial for users at the cell edge but also has a strongly positive effect on the performance of users at locations close to the base station

Long Term Evolution-Advanced and Future Machine-to-Machine Communication

Long Term Evolution (LTE) has adopted Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) as the downlink and uplink transmission schemes respectively. Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning is one of the primary objectives of wireless network operators. In LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), several additional new features such as Carrier Aggregation (CA) and Relay Nodes (RNs) have been introduced by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). These features have been designed to deal with the ever increasing demands for higher data rates and spectral efficiency. The RN is a low power and low cost device designed for extending the coverage and enhancing spectral efficiency, especially at the cell edge. Wireless networks are facing a new challenge emerging on the horizon, the expected surge of the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) traffic in cellular and mobile networks. The costs and sizes of the M2M devices with integrated sensors, network interfaces and enhanced power capabilities have decreased significantly in recent years. Therefore, it is anticipated that M2M devices might outnumber conventional mobile devices in the near future. 3GPP standards like LTE-A have primarily been developed for broadband data services with mobility support. However, M2M applications are mostly based on narrowband traffic. These standards may not achieve overall spectrum and cost efficiency if they are utilized for serving the M2M applications. The main goal of this thesis is to take the advantage of the low cost, low power and small size of RNs for integrating M2M traffic into LTE-A networks. A new RN design is presented for aggregating and multiplexing M2M traffic at the RN before transmission over the air interface (Un interface) to the base station called eNodeB. The data packets of the M2M devices are sent to the RN over the Uu interface. Packets from different devices are aggregated at the Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer of the Donor eNodeB (DeNB) into a single large IP packet instead of several small IP packets. Therefore, the amount of overhead data can be significantly reduced. The proposed concept has been developed in the LTE-A network simulator to illustrate the benefits and advantages of the M2M traffic aggregation and multiplexing at the RN. The potential gains of RNs such as coverage enhancement, multiplexing gain, end-to-end delay performance etc. are illustrated with help of simulation results. The results indicate that the proposed concept improves the performance of the LTE-A network with M2M traffic. The adverse impact of M2M traffic on regular LTE-A traffic such as voice and file transfer is minimized. Furthermore, the cell edge throughput and QoS performance are enhanced. Moreover, the results are validated with the help of an analytical model

Analyzing the impact of relay station characteristics on uplink performance in cellular network

Uplink users in cellular networks, such as UMTS/ HSPA, located at the edge of the cell generally suffer from poor channel conditions. Deploying intermediate relay nodes is seen as a promising approach towards extending cell coverage. This paper focuses on the role of packet scheduling in cellular networks with relay nodes. In particular, two uplink scheduling schemes deploying the relay functionality in different ways are compared in performance to a reference scenario where relaying is not used. We derive expressions which characterize for each of the two relay-enabled schedulers the service area of a relay station as a function of the relay location and transmit power. The results show that the service area is significantly influenced by the type of scheduling. Examining for both schedulers the impact on the effective data rates of mobile stations shows that there is an optimal combination of relay's position and transmit power which maximizes the service provided to all mobiles

Statistical priority-based uplink scheduling for M2M communications

Currently, the worldwide network is witnessing major efforts to transform it from being the Internet of humans only to becoming the Internet of Things (IoT). It is expected that Machine Type Communication Devices (MTCDs) will overwhelm the cellular networks with huge traffic of data that they collect from their environments to be sent to other remote MTCDs for processing thus forming what is known as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) appear as the best technology to support M2M communications due to their native IP support. LTE can provide high capacity, flexible radio resource allocation and scalability, which are the required pillars for supporting the expected large numbers of deployed MTCDs. Supporting M2M communications over LTE faces many challenges. These challenges include medium access control and the allocation of radio resources among MTCDs. The problem of radio resources allocation, or scheduling, originates from the nature of M2M traffic. This traffic consists of a large number of small data packets, with specific deadlines, generated by a potentially massive number of MTCDs. M2M traffic is therefore mostly in the uplink direction, i.e. from MTCDs to the base station (known as eNB in LTE terminology). These characteristics impose some design requirements on M2M scheduling techniques such as the need to use insufficient radio resources to transmit a huge amount of traffic within certain deadlines. This presents the main motivation behind this thesis work. In this thesis, we introduce a novel M2M scheduling scheme that utilizes what we term the “statistical priority” in determining the importance of information carried by data packets. Statistical priority is calculated based on the statistical features of the data such as value similarity, trend similarity and auto-correlation. These calculations are made and then reported by the MTCDs to the serving eNBs along with other reports such as channel state. Statistical priority is then used to assign priorities to data packets so that the scarce radio resources are allocated to the MTCDs that are sending statistically important information. This would help avoid exploiting limited radio resources to carry redundant or repetitive data which is a common situation in M2M communications. In order to validate our technique, we perform a simulation-based comparison among the main scheduling techniques and our proposed statistical priority-based scheduling technique. This comparison was conducted in a network that includes different types of MTCDs, such as environmental monitoring sensors, surveillance cameras and alarms. The results show that our proposed statistical priority-based scheduler outperforms the other schedulers in terms of having the least losses of alarm data packets and the highest rate in sending critical data packets that carry non-redundant information for both environmental monitoring and video traffic. This indicates that the proposed technique is the most efficient in the utilization of limited radio resources as compared to the other techniques

Packet Scheduling Algorithms in LTE/LTE-A cellular Networks: Multi-agent Q-learning Approach

Spectrum utilization is vital for mobile operators. It ensures an efficient use of spectrum bands, especially when obtaining their license is highly expensive. Long Term Evolution (LTE), and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) spectrum bands license were auctioned by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to mobile operators with hundreds of millions of dollars. In the first part of this dissertation, we study, analyze, and compare the QoS performance of QoS-aware/Channel-aware packet scheduling algorithms while using CA over LTE, and LTE-A heterogeneous cellular networks. This included a detailed study of the LTE/LTE-A cellular network and its features, and the modification of an open source LTE simulator in order to perform these QoS performance tests. In the second part of this dissertation, we aim to solve spectrum underutilization by proposing, implementing, and testing two novel multi-agent Q-learning-based packet scheduling algorithms for LTE cellular network. The Collaborative Competitive scheduling algorithm, and the Competitive Competitive scheduling algorithm. These algorithms schedule licensed users over the available radio resources and un-licensed users over spectrum holes. In conclusion, our results show that the spectrum band could be utilized by deploying efficient packet scheduling algorithms for licensed users, and can be further utilized by allowing unlicensed users to be scheduled on spectrum holes whenever they occur

이동통신 네트워크에서의 QoS 패킷 스케줄러 설계 및 고정 릴레이 관련 주파수 재사용 관리 기법 연구

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 공과대학 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 8. 박세웅.The main interest of this paper is to understand a basic approach to provide more efficient method to allocate radio resources in the mobile communication systems, especially in which radio resources could be allocated by both frequency and time division multiple access. So, we consider OFDMA system and the ideas described in this paper could be easily applied to the current and next generation mobile communication systems. This paper studies two basic research themesa QoS packet scheduler design and fixed relay resource management policies based on frequency reuse in mobile networks. This paper considers novel scheduler structures that are executable in the environments of multiple traffic classes and multiple frequency channels. To design a scheduler structure for multiple traffic classes, we first propose a scheduler selection rule that uses the priority of traffic class and the urgency level of each packet. Then we relax the barrier of traffic class priority when a high priority packet has some room in waiting time. This gives us a chance to exploit multiuser diversity, thereby giving more flexibility in scheduling. Our considered scheduler can achieve higher throughput compared to the simple extension of conventional modified largest weighted delay first (MLWDF) scheduler while maintaining the delay performance for QoS class traffic. We also design a scheduler structure for multiple frequency channels that chooses a good channel for each user whenever possible to exploit frequency diversity. The simulation results show that our proposed scheduler increases the total system throughput by up to 50% without degrading the delay performance. This paper also introduces radio resource management schemes based on frequency reuse for fixed relay stations in mobile cellular networks. Mobile stations in the cell boundary experience poor spectral efficiency due to the path loss and interference from adjacent cells. Therefore, satisfying QoS requirements of each MS at the cell boundary has been an important issue. To resolve this spectral efficiency problem at the cell boundary, deploying fixed relay stations has been actively considered. In this paper, we consider radio resource management policies based on frequency reuse for fixed relays that include path selection rules, frequency reuse pattern matching, and frame transmission pattern matching among cells. We evaluate performance of each policy by varying parameter values such as relay stations position and frequency reuse factor. Through Monte Carlo simulations and mathematical analysis, we suggest some optimal parameter values for each policy and discuss some implementation issues that need to be considered in practical deployment of relay stations. We also surveyed further works that many researchers have been studied to tackle the similar problems of QoS scheduling and resource management for relay with our proposed work. We expect that there would be more future works by priority-based approach and energy-aware approach for QoS scheduling. Also current trends such as the rising interest in IoT system, discussion of densification of cells and D2D communications in 5G systems make us expect that the researches in these topics related with relays would be popular in the future. We also think that there are many interesting problems regarding QoS support and resource management still waiting to be tackled, especially combined with recent key topics in mobile communication systems such as 5G standardization, AI and NFV/SDN.Chapter 1 Introduction 1 1.1 QoS Packet Scheduler 4 1.2 Fixed Relay Frequency Reuse Policies 6 Chapter 2 Scheduler Design for Multiple Traffic Classes in OFDMA Networks 10 2.1 Proposed Schedulers 10 2.1.1 Scheduler Structures 12 2.1.2 MLWDF scheduler for Multiple Traffic Classes 13 2.1.3 Joint Scheduler 13 2.2 System Model 18 2.3 Performance Evaluation 19 2.3.1 Schedulers for Multiple Traffic Classes 20 2.3.2 Impact of Scheduler Selection Rule 25 2.3.3 Frame Based Schedulers 27 2.3.4 Impact of Partial Feedback 30 2.3.5 Adaptive Threshold Version Schedulers 33 2.4 Conclusion 36 Chapter 3 Frequency Reuse Policies for Fixed Relays in Cellular Networks 40 3.1 System Model 40 3.1.1 Frame Transmission and Frequency Reuse Patterns among RSs 42 3.1.2 Positioning of RSs and Channel Capacity 44 3.1.3 Area Spectral Efficiency 45 3.2 Radio Resource Management Policies Based on Frequency Reuse 46 3.2.1 Path Selection Rule 46 3.2.2 Frequency Reuse and Frame Transmission Pattern Matchings among Cells 52 3.3 Monte Carlo Simulation and Results 53 3.4 Consideration of Practical Issues 80 3.5 Conclusion 81 Chapter 4 Surveys of Further Works 83 4.1 Further Works on QoS Schedulers 83 4.1.1 WiMAX Schedulers 85 4.1.2 LTE Schedulers 92 4.2 Further Works on Radio Resource Management in Relay Systems 98 4.3 Future Challenges 100 Chapter 5 Conclusion 104 Bibliography 107 초록 127Docto