An Evaluation of the Proportional Fair Scheduler in a Physically Deployed LTE-A Network

Abstract

The Proportional Fair (PF) scheduler has been extensively studied in wireless communications research. Most of the research done, however, focuses on theoretical or simplistic simulations. In this paper, both theory and practical measurements for a PF scheduler are studied. Two data collections are conducted to verify the performance of the scheduler in an actual LTE-A network (small cells) environment. Allocated Physical Resource Blocks (PRBs) and throughput of each phone used in the data collection are estimated. Three different types of PF schedulers are implemented to predict user throughput. The results show that the scheduler maintains good fairness for both user throughputs and PRB allocation. Further it is shown that our results, derived from actual recorded data are different from those derived from simulation models presented in the literature [1] [2]. Similarly, the cell throughput and fairness values are dynamic and randomly distributed with the time in an actual LTE-A network in contrast to simulation models. From our study, we show that the generalize PF Scheduler performs more accurately to predict the user throughput values. It is concluded that this real-world LTE-A network study is more meaningful and valuable in enhancing the understanding of actual 4G and future 5G networks.