Quality of Service Based Radio Resources Scheduling for 5G eMBB Use Case

Abstract

Several use cases appear with 5G and beyond networks such as enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), where ultra-high data rates and low-latency connections become essential demands for asymmetric services, e.g., 8K video streaming and virtual reality (VR). The millimeter-wave (mmWave) band can be a promising player to handle these applications under the condition of efficient implementation of radio resource management (RRM) schemes, which distribute resources among user equipment (UEs) in the network. Firstly, mmWave UE channels are highly affected by the distance between the access point (AP) and UEs. Secondly, static and dynamic obstacles can easily block the AP-UE line-of-sight (LOS) link; hence, it highly attenuates mmWave signals. Moreover, eMBB applications lack symmetry in their data rate requirements, from 75 Mbps up to 300 Mbps; consequently, UE quality of service (QoS) should be considered in designing RRM schemes. In this paper, we study possible scheduling schemes that can be implemented for the 5G eMBB use case. Moreover, we propose a new demand-based proportional fairness (DPF) scheduling algorithm that first depends on both UE channel conditions and quality-of-service demands, then, if certain UEs reach the requirement, the algorithm prioritizes it only based on their channel quality. Furthermore, in this work, we consider a real model to simulate the effect of blockage occurrence on the performance of scheduling schemes. Results prove that the proposed DPF scheduling scheme outperforms conventional algorithms in terms of UE satisfaction while maintaining high total system throughput and fairness among UEs. For example, assuming blockage occurrence with 16 and 32 UEs, it guarantees satisfaction for more than 99% and 60% of UEs and, at the same time, obtains 3.29 and 4.24 Gbps system throughput and maintains fairness between UEs at 0.99 and 0.82, respectively. In contrast, conventional proportional fairness highly degrades satisfaction to only 74% and 30% to achieve total throughput equal to 3.1 and 4.3 Gbps, respectively.