A New Cross Layer Approach to QoS-Aware Proportional Fairness Packet Scheduling in the Downlink of OFDM Wireless Systems

OFDM systems are the major cellular platforms for supporting ubiquitous high performance mobile applications. However, there remain a number of research challenges to be tackled. One of the most important challenges is the design of a judicious packet scheduler so as to make efficient use of the spectrum bandwidth. In this paper, we propose a new QoS-aware proportional fairness (QPF) packet scheduling policy for the downlink of multiuser OFDM systems to allocate radio resource among users. Our proposed algorithm is based on a cross layer design in that the scheduler is aware of both channel and queue state information to achieve proportional fairness while improving each user's QoS performance. Simulation results indicate that the proposed QPF algorithm is efficient in terms of average system throughput, packet dropping probability, and packet delay, while maintaining adequate fairness among users.