LINK SCHEDULING ALGORITHM FOR OFDMA WIRELESS NETWORKS WITH RELAY NODES

A method (200) for scheduling link activations within a wireless communications network (100) is proposed. The wireless communication network includes at least one network cell (110), the at least one network cell comprising a base station (105) providing radio coverage over the network cell and at least one relay node (120) for putting into communication the base station with at least one corresponding user equipment (115) within the network cell. Said at least one relay node communicates with the user equipment over an access link and with the base station over a backhaul link. In the solution according to one or more embodiments of the present invention, the method includes estimating (205), for the at least one relay node, an access link capacity according to status information indicative of a status of the user equipment associated with the relay node, estimating (210) a backhaul link capacity of the at least one relay node according to the status information, and scheduling (215), for the at least one relay node, either a backhaul link activation or an access link activation such that either one of the backhaul link and the access link is activated, in a predetermined time interval, based on a comparison between the access capacity and the backhaul capacity.