New Frequency-Time Scheduling Algorithms for 3GPP/LTE-like OFDMA Air Interface in the Downlink

This paper proposes new frequency-time schedulers for 3GPP/LTE-like system in the downlink. 3GPP/LTE DL is OFDMA-based with adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and frequency-time scheduling to enhance spectral efficiency and aggregate system throughput. Time-frequency scheduling and AMC can be implemented jointly or separately i.e. sequentially AMC after scheduling. Two novel schedulers are proposed in this paper with respectively joint and separate implementation of scheduling and AMC. Through system level performance evaluation, results show that the first scheduler with separate AMC and scheduling implementation outperforms the second scheduler (with joint AMC implementation) in terms of trade off between fairness and capacity and implementation complexity.