Cross-Layer Enhanced Uplink Packet Scheduling for Multimedia Traffic Over MC-CDMA Networks

Most existing scheduling algorithms for multimedia traffic in code-division multiple-access (CDMA) networks have been designed under the assumption that the physical layer operates with a bounded bit error rate (BER) such that the packet error rate (PER) in the link layer is also bounded. However, there is a tradeoff between the PER and the packet drop rate (PDR) caused by delay violations, i.e., by slightly degrading the PER, more packets can be sent, thus lowering the PDR. In this paper, we present a new cross-layer enhancement to optimize the cross-layer quality-of-service (QoS) parameter-the packet loss rate (PLR)-that accounts for both the PER and the PDR. Furthermore, we study the fairness issue in terms of the PLR experienced by different users. Then, we propose a novel algorithm to schedule uplink multimedia traffic in time-division multicode CDMA networks, which optimizes the PLR experienced by each user in each frame, subject to fair distribution of packet losses between users according to the proposed cross-layer enhancement and fairness constraint. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides fairness in packet losses among users of different traffic classes and achieves superior performance over two previous algorithms in terms of increasing the system capacity and reducing the PLR and average delay because of the cross-layer enhancement.