Proportional Resource Partitioning Over Shared Wireless Links

High speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) is a packet-based data service in UMTS networks that supports data rates of several Mbit/s, making it suitable for data applications ranging from file transfer to multimedia streaming. In spite of the fairly high data rates that HSDPA offers, the shared downlink radio channel used in HSDPA is a challenging environment for delay- and loss-sensitive applications. It is relatively easy to partition resources over wired links with known link capacity. Nevertheless, such partitioning is complex for wireless links with variable capacity; due to the dynamic nature of the link, it is difficult to effectively allocate the resources (i.e., time slots) between users who may be paying different prices for different services. In this paper we study the general problem of resource partitioning for shared wireless links like HSDPA. We consider different QoS classes or user groups, and the use of MAC-layer scheduling for resource partitioning between groups and between individual users. We propose a variant of an existing HSDPA scheduler called required activity detection (RAD) scheduler. The proposal is studied using a detailed UMTS/HSDPA simulator.