A New Cross Layer Approach to QoS-Aware Proportional Fairness Packet Scheduling in the Downlink of OFDM Wireless Systems

OFDM systems are the major cellular platforms for supporting ubiquitous high performance mobile applications. However, there remain a number of research challenges to be tackled. One of the most important challenges is the design of a judicious packet scheduler so as to make efficient use of the spectrum bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a new QoS-aware proportional fairness (QPF) packet scheduling policy for the downlink of multiuser OFDM systems to allocate radio resource among users. Our proposed algorithm is based on a cross layer design in that the scheduler is aware of both channel and queue state information to achieve proportional fairness while improving each user´s QoS performance. Simulation results indicate that the proposed QPF algorithm is efficient in terms of average system throughput, packet dropping probability, and packet delay, while maintaining adequate fairness among users.