Efficient Frequency Domain Packet scheduler for Point-to-Multipoint transmissions in LTE networks

Long Term Evolution (LTE) is the emerging 4G wireless technology developed to provide high quality services in mobile environments. It is foreseen that multimedia services and mobile TV will assume an important role for the LTE proliferation in mobile market. However, several issues are still open and meaningful improvements have to be introduced for managing physical resources when group-oriented services should be supplied. To this end, we propose a Frequency Domain Packet Scheduling (FDPS) algorithm for efficient radio resource management of Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services (MBMS) in LTE networks. The proposed scheduler exploits an optimization process to organize multicast subscribers in subgroups according to channel quality feedbacks provided by users. Optimization is driven by the aim of minimizing the “user dissatisfaction” with a consequent improvement in the network capacity. The effectiveness of the proposed scheduling algorithm is evaluated through simulation; obtained results demonstrate significant improvement in the multicast traffic performance.