Packet scheduling for VOIP over LTE-A

LTE-A (Long Term Evolution Advanced) constitutes a significant step in the evolution of 3G systems towards 4G technologies. The performance targets set out for LTE Advanced make it an ideal solution to take care of the ever increasing demand for wireless broadband services. LTE Advanced has also great changes in its key technologies by introducing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and advanced transmission techniques. Quality of Service support (QoS) for multiple data services such as voice and other multimedia applications is further made better and enhanced. The Packet Scheduler plays a prime role as a feature of LTE´s Radio Resource Management to increase the system´s data rate and provide support for the diverse QoS requirements of mobile services. Using dynamic system level simulations, this study performs an evaluation of a given set of scheduling Algorithms. It seeks to find out whether these algorithms are capable of providing Quality of Service in a scenario where VOIP and web-browsing using will compete for the same resources. It is observed that those algorithms that incorporate delay requirements of the VOIP traffic presented the best overall capacity for all traffic mixes. Based on this we propose a new scheduling scheme that aims to achieve QoS for voice users by minimizing packet loss and achieving a higher System throughput. Our scheme is designed to achieve throughput fairness for both LTE and LTE-Advanced terminals as both types of terminals will coexist in the same network.