Flexible Scheduling for Real-Time Services in High-Speed Packet Access Cellular Networks

This paper presents the hybrid channel-aware and real-time scheduler (HY-CART) for UMTS high-speed packet access networks. The latter works for both downlink and uplink scheduling, with slightly different embodiments due to the different technology constraints. Its basic principle is to select users based on their channel conditions when the deadlines are far ahead: as the deadlines approach, they become progressively more important. Furthermore, resources for scheduled users are allocated sparingly, i.e. enough to serve packets whose deadline is actually near, so as to make room for a possibly larger number of simultaneous users, and keeping into account the user channel state. Simulative evaluation shows that HY-CART performs better than the previous work, allowing more users to be served with the same resources.