Fast packet scheduling assuring fairness and quality of service in HSDPA

We consider packet scheduling in high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) networks in the presence of heterogeneous channels. In this case, proportional fairness (PF) scheduling and its enhanced version, the data rate control (DRC) exponent rule, fail to achieve the goal of providing fair data rates to users. We propose a new scheduling policy that resolves this problem. The proposed adaptive proportional fairness (APF) scheduling is shown to ensure proportional fairness even for users experiencing different channel conditions. The APF algorithm is subdivided into two modules: a short term module, which consists of an enhanced version of the selection criterion adopted in the DRC exponential rule, and a long-term monitoring module, in which we have updating of the control parameters that we introduce to ensure fairness among users. Simulation results and comparisons, provided for the best-effort mode of operation, show the high efficiency of our approach compared to proportional fairness scheduling.