Queue-aware scheduling in full-duplex wireless networks

Abstract

Contemporary progress in telecommunication technologies have made full-duplex wireless communications feasible. The latter promise to double the capacity of wireless networks by allowing devices to concurrently transmit and receive on the same radio resources. In this paper, we devise mathematical optimal formulations for scheduling in full-duplex and hybrid full-duplex/half-duplex orthogonal frequency division multiple access networks. Our optimal models are queue-aware and address the new interferences that arise from working with full-duplex wireless networks: self-interference and intra-cell co-channel interference. We apply these models with different scheduling objectives, tackling issues such as signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) maximization and user fairness. Accordingly, we first propose an optimal full-duplex Max-SINR algorithm and an optimal full-duplex Proportional Fair algorithm. Additionally, and since full-duplex communications may not always be profitable, we introduce an optimal hybrid Max-SINR algorithm and an optimal hybrid Proportional Fair algorithm. These algorithms switch between full-duplex and half-duplex transmissions, so as to enhance network performance. Moreover, to avoid possible intractability with the optimization problems, we propose heuristic versions of our algorithms. We simulate these proposals, showing that they achieve near optimal performances, and asserting the different gains they attain with respect to their half-duplex counterparts: more than a 50% increase in user equipment throughput values alongside a three fold decrease in the average user equipment waiting delay.