Utility-Based Resource Allocation under Multi-Connectivity in Evolved LTE

Abstract

In the current 4G era, the dual connectivity technique utilizes radio resources scheduled by two distinct base stations for a single user equipment to enhance the data throughput. Multi- connectivity, as a natural evolution of dual connectivity, is one of the key 5G techniques to improve both the user performance and overall resource utilization, allowing dynamic user traffic steering across multiple connections of one or more radio access technologies (RATs). However, one of the main challenge in multi-connectivity is to efficiently allocate resources across multiple connections under heterogeneous quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we examine a resource allocation problem under multi- connectivity in an evolved LTE network and propose a utility proportional fairness (UPF) resource allocation that supports QoS in terms of requested rates. We evaluate the proposed policy with the proportional fairness (PF) resource allocation through extensive simulations and characterize performance gain from both the user and network perspectives under different conditions.