Efficient and fair scheduling for best-effort downlink packet data

A scheduling method to compromise between pure opportunistic (PO) and relative best (RB) scheduling is proposed for downlink packet-based data transmission, where multiple and high rates are supported by multicode CDMA and high-order modulation formats. The selection diversity offered by short-term fading is used to increase fairness compared to PO, while the multiuser diversity offered by independent spatial user distribution is partially used to yield higher throughput than RB. Statistical modeling for tractable analysis is made to account for in-cell and intercell interference, which leads to evaluation of the average rate capacity in multiple cells. It is shown that the proposed scheduling offers a balanced trade-off between throughput and fairness, which overcomes shortcomings with PO and RB scheduling.