Fair and efficient packet scheduling algorithms for multiple classes of service under QoS guarantee in UMTS

Packet scheduling is the essential technique to provide QoS for multiple classes of service. Provided a minimum amount of bandwidth guarantee and a fair shared of residual bandwidth under a certain amount of power are the two major objectives of the packet scheduling in 3G networks. This paper presents two scheduling algorithms, MWF2Q+ and MDRR, for multiple classes of service in the forward link of the UMTS network. These scheduling algorithms can allocate bandwidth in proportion to weights of flows sharing the channel under a certain amount of transmission power, and assign OVSF code to backlogged flows on a frame-by-frame basis. The MWF2Q+ algorithm has better fairness properties while the MDRR algorithm requires less computational complexity. The efficiency and fairness properties are verified by our performance analysis. Our simulation results show that these two algorithms support multiple traffic sources with heterogeneous rate guarantees while fully utilizing the system bandwidth. The impact of self-similar traffic is also addressed in our simulations.