Downlink Packet Scheduling for Real-Time Traffic in Multi-User OFDMA System

Liu Xiantao, Liu Guangyi, Wang Ying, Zhang Ping

WTI Institute, Beijing University of Posts & Telecoms, P.O. No.92, No. 10, Xi Tu Cheng Road, Hai Dian District, Beijing, P.R.China. Email: xiantaoliu@hotmail.com
Abstract- Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (OFDMA) which can make full use of frequency resources by using adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and multi-user diversity, is a promising technology for the next generation wireless communication system. The flexibility of OFDMA also makes the radio resource management (RRM) more complicated. This paper proposes a Modified Largest Weighted Delay First (M-LWDF) packet scheduling algorithm with subcarrier allocation for the real time service in the multiuser OFDMA systems. The simulation result shows that it can maximize the system throughput and guarantee the QoS (Quality of Service) of different users. Key words: access control, packet scheduling, subcarrier allocation, AMC, multi-user OFDMA

which can be grouped and used as a subchannel. To achieve the max throughput, the users can select the best subchannels to transmit data and apply the AMC on each subchannel according to the channel condition. We assume that the whole system has a bandwidth of B and divided into M subcarriers. In the single cell multi-users environment without considering the large scale fading, if the i
th th

User Equipment (UE) uses the m subcarrier, its received signal can be expressed as follow

Z i , m = bi ,m Si.m i.m + m

(1)

where bi ,m is the send symbol; i .m is the fading factor on the subcarrier; Si.m is the power factor ; m is the Additional White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) received on the m m = N 0 B / M .
th th

I. INTRODUCTION In the next generation wireless communication system, data service such as real time video stream, multi-media service, will become the main service. All the traffic will be transmitted over IP network and the wireless system should guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) of all users. OFDMA is a proposed technology, which can transmit data streams to different users over orthogonal subcarriers with Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC). It can mostly approach the channel capacity, and meanwhile the Radio Resource Management (RRM) becomes more flexible and complicated. The basic idea of data service in the OFDMA system is to allocate enough subcarriers to users and satisfy the QoS of them, which is the main problem in the multi-user packet scheduling. In 3G systems, many scheduling algorithms have been studied, which can mostly improve the whole system throughput and meantime guarantee the users QoS [1]. But they cannot be simply applied to the OFDMA system because many factors just like AMC, subcarrier allocation and multi-user diversity should also be taken into consideration. In this paper, the link performance of OFDM system is analyzed, and a system model is presented. In section III, we propose a new access control algorithm based on the average channel condition; In section IV, we modify the M-LWDF algorithm to adapt to the real-time service in the OFDMA system, and give out a subcarrier allocation algorithm; Section V gives the simulation environment and results. Finally we draw the conclusion. II. SYSTEM MODEL

sub carrier, and

So the received SNR on the m subcarrier can be given by

i, m =
E bi ,m E m

Si , m i , m
2

Si , m i , m N0 B M

(2)

In OFDMA system, each subcarrier occupies a narrow band, whose channel state can be regarded as flat. However the fading on each subcarrier varies for the frequency selective fading. The adjacent subcarriers are almost having the same channel response,
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This work is funded by the NSF of China under grant No. 60302024 and 60496312.

According to [3], the BER upper limits with QAM modulation is 1.5* i ,m 1 (3) BER exp q 5 2 i ,m 1 By applying AMC on the subcarrier, the bit number carried on this subcarrier can be expressed as (4) qi ,m = log 2 (1 + i ,m ) Where is SINR gap and = ln ( 5BER ) /1.5 . In [2][3], it proved that the water-filling and fixed power allocation with AMC almost have the same system throughput without considering the large scale fading, and by applying Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA), the system throughput can be improve greatly. It also has been proved that the water-filling and equal power allocation almost have the same performance in the high SNR condition. So in the simulation below, we uses equal power allocation on each subcarrier. In the multi-cell environment, the co-channel interference should be considered, and with the large scale fading the SINR can be rewritten as 2 Si ,m i , m * PLi (5) i,m =
N0 B + Ii , m M

1-4244-0063-5/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE

where PLi is the large scale fading of the i

th

th

UE, including

path loss and shadowing, and I i , m is the received interference from the other cell on the m subcarrier. UEs feed back the SINR on each subcarrier as the channel quality indicator to the Base station (BS); The BS can allocate the subcarriers and select the suitable Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) to different UE according to its channel condition. Each MCS sends fixed length data, but the packets from the upper layer are not the same size or just adaptive with the channel capacity. To mostly explore the channel capacity and adapt to the different modulation and coding rates, we assume that the packets are repacked into constant size blocks in the physical layer [4]. The block size can be decided by both the lowest MCS and the physical channel capacity. Each block is appended its Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) and Coded. If the Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) is necessary, only the error blocks will be retransmitted. Therefore the best subcarrier diversity and maximum throughput can be obtained. In TABLE 1, different MCS modes with a block size of 160bit using convolution code in the AWGN channel are given out.
TABLE 1 MCS MODE TABLE MCS 1 2 3 4 5 6 SINR(dB) -3.5 0.5 3.7 6.3 10.5 15.2 Blocks 1 2 3 4 6 9 Modulation BPSK QPSK QPSK 16QAM 16QAM 64QAM Coding rate 1/2 1/2 3/4 1/2 3/4 3/4

For the new coming UEs: If reqresexist + reqresnew reqrescell_new Admit the new coming UE to system Else Reject the new coming UE End For the handover request UEs: If reqresexist_new + reqreshandover reqrescell_new or
reqrescell_new reqrescell_old

Admit the handover request Else Reject handover request End where cell_new is the target cell for the handover or the new call, and cell_old is the UEs current cell. IV. PACKET SCHEDULING ALGORITHM

Many packets scheduling algorithms, e.g. Maximum C/I (MCI), Round Robin (RR), Proportional Fair (PF)[1][7], have been studied in the 3G systems. In 3G systems there is only one carrier and the UEs are distinguished by codes, each channel has the same capacity for one user. As the channel capacity constraint, most of the UE scheduling are done in time scale. But in OFDMA system, the UEs select different subcarriers to send data paralleled. The capacity on each subcarrier is different for the independent fading on different subcarriers. The current scheduling algorithms should be applied to adapt to the feature of OFDMA systems. M-LWDF [6] is the most popular scheduling algorithm for real time service in 3G systems, which takes into account both the channel conditions and the users QoS.

III.

ADMISSION CONTROL ALGORITHM

i (t ) = bWi (t ) i

From the multi-cell performance analysis and (5), we can get that the total system capacity is mainly related with the UEs path loss. The distance between the UEs and BS mainly decides the SINR available and the channel capacity. As the UEs keep moving, the system capacity varies with time. When a new call comes or a handover request happens, the admission control should be issued to judge if the call can be admitted to the system. In this paper, the admission control method is proposed as follows. 1) Calculate the average channel capcity of the existing UEs on the subchannels that can support the lowest MCS at least. According to the UEs target data rate and the average channel capacity, the average number of the subchannel required for a UE can be obtained as reqresexist . If no sub channels can support any MCS, set the reqresexist as reqresmax . reqresmax is the maximum number of the sub channels that can be used by one UE and it is decided by the UEs data rate and the lowest MCS level. 2) Calculate the new coming and handover UEs average channel capacity and the required sub channel number by the similar way above, then it is defined as reqresnew .

ri (t ) ri
th

(6) UE,

where Wi (t ) is the head of the line packet delay of i

bi =

log( i ) is related to the kind of traffic and is the maximum i Wi max

max

probability of Wi (t ) exceeding Wi

of the same kind of

th

traffic, ri (t ) data rate can be achieved by i

UE at time t , ri the

UE average data rate. The UE having the highest priority will be first served. 1) Modified M-LWDF algorithm Average channel condition

i (t )

In OFDMA system, each subcarrier has respective channel response and interference, so the supported data rates are different with AMC. To apply M-LWDF algorithm to OFDMA system, the new average channel condition is defined as

HNRi ,m =

P * PLi * H i ,m ( Ii , m + m )*

(7)

where P is the power allocated on the m subcarrier, and

th

H i , m is the fast fading on the m subcarrier. So the average

channel condition of the i UE is
th

th

Step 5) If there are still some subcarriers left and some UEs have data in buffer, Goto Step 2. Step 6) Finish the algorithm. By using the above-mentioned subcarrier allocation algorithm, the minimum data rate can be guaranteed for most of the UEs by selecting some good subcarriers for them in one frame. Meanwhile the packet with longest delay has highest priority to be sent first and the packet loss rate can be minimized. But the smaller the stepresource-number, the more complicated the system calculation is. So an appropriate step-resource-number should be chosen according to either of the following rules: A. Select constant number of subcarriers for every loop according to the users minimum data rate requirement. B. Select constant number of blocks to transmit for every loop according to the users buffer length. It can be seen that the two algorithms are only different in the resource definition: method A considers the subcarriers used by the UE, while method B concentrates on the block numbers in the UEs buffer. Their performances are almost the same, so in our simulation only method A is selected to be analyzed. There are two aspects should be noted for the resource allocation. If the step-resource-number of blocks has already been assigned, but the subcarrier still can load some block while the UEs buffer is not empty, assign enough blocks to occupy the subcarriers assigned. If the subcarrier capacity is much bigger than the number of blocks in UEs buffer, turn to next UE and allocate subcarrier to the UE in next loop. V. 1) SIMULATION ASSUMPTIONS

1 Ri = M

M m =1

log 2 (1 + HNRi ,m ) Ri (t ) Ri
th

(8)

The M-LWDF algorithm can be rewritten as

i (t ) = bWi (t ) i

(9)

where Ri is the average data rate of the i UE. Average delay As the definition above, to achieve the maximum multi-user diversity gain and approach the subcarrier capacity, the packet from the upper layer needs to be repacked into small constant size block in physical layer, so the delay definition of each packet should be modified. Average delay is defined as:

Di =

1 L

Di ,l
l =1

(10)

where L is the block length in the UEs buffer, and Di ,l is the delay of the l block. From the definition above, we can see that the average delay is decided by both of the packet length and the delay. UE Packet Loss and Error Rate For different class of QoS, different Packet Loss and Error Rate (PLER) [4][5] is required. When the UEs PLER is increasing, the UE should have higher priority to transmit, so the PLER should be considered. In the following, we calculate the Block Loss and Error Rate (BLER) instead of PLER and the M_LWDF algorithm is modified as:
th

Traffic model

In this paper we consider two kinds of real-time traffic models: 128kbit/s video and 32kbit/s voice streaming defined as follows.
TABLE 2 TRAFFIC MODEL PARAMETERS Video Stream model Inter-arrival time between the beginning of each video-frame Number of video-packet in a frame Video packet size Inter-arrival between video-packets in a video frame Video packet max delay time Video average data rate Video minimum data rate Video length Voice model Voice packet size Inter-arrival between voice-packets Voice packet max delay time Voice average data rate Voice minimum data rate Voice length Value 100ms 8 200byte Truncated Pareto K=2.5 alpha = 1.2 M= 12.5ms 200ms 128kbit/s 32kbit/s 120s Value 640bits 20ms 100ms 32kb/s 16kb/s 90s

R (t ) BLERi (t ) i (t ) = bWi (t ) i i i Ri BLERmax

Sub carrier allocation algorithm

(11)

In the OFDMA system, many subcarrier allocation methods have been studied to explore the multi-user diversity and maximize the system throughput. For the real-time service, the subcarrier allocation is related with scheduling, and the QoS of the UE should also be considered. Here we propose a simple subcarrier allocation algorithm with the packet scheduling and it is described as follows: Step 1) Sort the subcarriers by channel capacity for every UE. Step 2) Calculate priority by (11) for all UEs if it has data to send, otherwise set the priority as negative. Step 3) Sort all UEs by their priority. Step 4) Allocate step-resource-number (it will be discussed later) to UEs by priority, and renew the buffer data.

The UEs arrive in as a Poisson process. For each kind of service, average data rate is calculated every 1.5s. When the average data rate is lower than the minimum data rate, the call will be dropped. Signaling and data blocks are assumed to be transmitted error free with no ARQ considered. When a block is

transmitted, it will be correctly received by the UEs. A packet is only dropped when the delay time exceeds the maximum delay allowed. 2) SYSTEM PARAMETERS

with the average data 32kb/s considered, while the 128kb/s video service occupies 5 subchannels at most.

The system bandwidth is 10MHz which is divided into 601 subcarriers [9]. The adjacent 8 subcarriers are bonded together as a subchannel, so there will be about 75 subchannels. The frame structure using in the simulation is as follows:

Fig 1 Frame structure of the system

Each frame has 7 time slots with 9 OFDM symbols in each slot. The last 5 slots are used as downlink slots. A resource unit is defined by 5 slots and 1 subchannel which can take 180 bits with the lowest MCS. So in the physical layer every data packet is repacked into blocks with constant size 160 bits, plus 20bits as the other redundancy. The scheduling is executed every frame. 9 cells is simulated to model the co-channel interferes [8]. The UEs are uniformly distributed in the simulation area. To avoid the boundary affection, wraparound is used to calculate interference. The BS power is equally distributed on every subcarrier. The Other parameters are listed in the following table.
TABLE 3 SYSTEM PARAMETER Parameter Carrier Frequency Band width Sample Frequency Sub-carrier spacing FFT Size Subcarriers number Subcarrier Group number Inter-site distance Distance-dependent path loss Lognormal Shadowing Shadowing standard deviation Correlation distance of Shadowing Shadowing correlation between cells Assumption 2GHz 10MHz 15.36 MHz 15 kHz 1024 601 75 500m L=128.1 + 37.6log10(R) R in km UMTS 30.03, B 1.41.4 [6] 8 dB 50 m (See D,4 in UMTS 30.03) 0.5 Typical Urban (TU) early simulations Spatial Channel Model (SCM) later simulations 46dBm >= 35 meters [5]

Fig 2 Dissatisfied Ratio of the system Vs. UE number per cell

As in Fig 2, the blocking and dropping ratio become higher as the system load grows up. In this paper, the user s defined as unsatisfied if the average packet delay exceeds the maximum delay permitted. In Fig 3, the unsatisfied ratio of the users is presented for different system loads. We can see that the more UEs are in the system, the more users are not satisfied. The system capacity is defined as the system load where the user satisfied ratio is more than 98% for speech service and 95% for video service. So the system capacity for 32kbps speech service is about 175 per cell, and the system capacity for 128kb/s video stream service is 45 users per cell.

Fig 3 Maximum average packet delay ratio

Channel model Total BS TX power Minimum distance between UE and cell

3)

SIMULATION RESULT

From Fig 3, when the system load approaches the system capacity, the admission control can guarantee that the ratio of the total packets of all users, which is shorter than the maximum packet delay permitted for each service, is less than 95%, and the average packet loss ratios for the existing UEs in the system are all under 1%. And also we can see from Fig 4, the system throughput exceeds 5Mb/s for every cell when the system load approaches the system capacity.

Two different services are simulated independently. For the voice service, the maximum subchannel number required is set as 2

voice UEs in one cell of multi-cell scenario with frequency reuse factor 1.

Fig 4 System throughput Vs. system load

As the power is equally allocated on each subcarrier, the SINR distribution is related with the UEs position. In the simulation the frequency reuse factor is 1, the co-channel interference from the adjacent cells is very strong, and the received SINR of the UEs at the cell edge is very low in Fig 5.

Fig 6 SINR distribution of different Frequency Reuse factor

VII.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60496312, 60302024), National 863 Projects (No.2003AA12331004) and Samsung . REFERENCES
[1] Pablo Jos Packet Scheduling and Quality of Service in HSDPA Ph. D. Thesis October 2003 [2] Guoqing Li, Hui Liu Downlink Dynamic Resource Allocation for Multi-cell OFDMA System 2003 IEEE [3] Jiho Jang and Kwang Bok Lee Transmit power adaptation for multi-user OFDM systems,IEEE Journal on Selective Areas in Communications, VOL.21, NO.2, Feb.2003, pp.171-178 [4] Seokjoo Shin and Byung-Han Ryu Packet loss fair scheduling scheme for real-time traffic in OFDMA systems, ETRI Journal, Volume 26, Number 5, October 2004 [5] Dong Hoi KIM, Chung Gu KANG Subchannel Multiplexing scheme for mobile broadband wireless access services in AMC-based OFDMA system, 2005 The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers [6] Matthew Andrews, Krishnan Kumara, Kavita Ramanan, Alexander Stolayer, and Phil Whiting Providing Quality of Service over a Shared Wireless Link, IEEE Communications Magazine February 2001 [7] Yu Cheng, Hai Jiang, Weihua Zhuang, Zhisheng Niu and Chuang Lin Efficient Resource Allocation for Chinas 3G/4G Wireless Networks IEEE Communications Magazine February 2001 [8] Motorola, Nokia, Samsung Simulation Assumption and Evaluation for EUTRA, TSG RAN WG1#41 R1-050558 [9] CATT, RITT, ZTE, Huawei Numerology and Frame Structure of EUTRA TDD based on OFDMA and text proposal for TR 25.814, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1#42 R1-050800

Fig 5 Frequency Reuse factor 1 SINR distribution

It can be see in Fig 6, 30% UEs cant send any data on the any subcarrier according to MCS table. Without power control, most of them need the maximum number of subchannels to access and use the best subcarriers to guarantee the average data rate, which consumes most of the radio resources. This is the main reason which causes the dropping and blocking cases. However, it can be optimized by flexible frequency reuse. When the frequency reuse factor is 3, the condition becomes much better with the packet scheduling algorithm, but the system capacity will decrease. VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we analyze the multi-cell OFDMA system performance based on the equal power allocation on each subcarrier. We modify the M-LWDF algorithm to adapt to OFDMA system and propose an admission control and an iterative subcarrier allocation method to explore the multi-user diversity. We can see that these algorithms can support 45 video stream UEs and 175