SON Potential for LTE Downlink MAC Scheduler

Xi Li
1
, Yasir Zaki
2
, Yangyang Dong
1
, Nikola Zahariev
1
, Carmelita Goerg
1

1
ComNets, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany
1
Email:{xili, ydong, nkz, cg}@comnets.uni-bremen.de
2
Computer Science Department, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD)
2
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
2
Email: yz48@nyu.edu



Abstract One of the key radio resource management functions
in mobile broadband networks is radio scheduling (also called
MAC scheduling), which coordinates the access to shared radio
resources. In Long Term Evolution (LTE), advanced scheduling
algorithms are needed to provide proper QoS for multi-services
and optimize the trade-off between QoS and resource efficiency.
Moreover, in order to reduce the overall operation effort and
costs, it is also more and more desired by the mobile network
operators to develop a self-optimization function which can
automatically adapt the optimized settings of the MAC scheduler
in accordance with the traffic and network changes during the
continuing operations. In this paper we use a novel OSA
(Optimized Service Aware) scheduling algorithm for LTE, which
provides a good balance between multi-QoS provisioning to
support mixes of real-time/non-real-time traffic and system
performance maximization in a proportionally fair manner. We
present extensive simulation results to investigate the impact of
the parameter settings of the OSA scheduler on the service and
system performance, and further compare with the well known
Proportional Fair (PF) scheduler. In addition, we explore the
sensitivity of the optimal setting of the OSA scheduler with
respect to different traffic scenarios. Then based on the
investigations, we discuss the potential gain of applying SON
(Self-Organizing Networks) functions to the OSA scheduler.
KeywordsLTE; MAC Scheduler; QoS; Optimization; SON;
I. INTRODUCTION
In LTE Radio Resource Management (RRM) is a
challenging task as many operators nowadays offer unlimited
data plans and different services. One of the key RRM
functions in LTE is radio scheduling (as called MAC
scheduling in this paper), which coordinates the access to
shared radio resources. In OFDMA-based LTE systems, this
coordination generally considers two distinct dimensions, the
time dimension (allocation of time frames) and the frequency
dimension (allocation of subcarriers or subcarrier groups). A
key challenge in setting parameters for a MAC scheduler is to
optimize resource efficiency, while satisfying the users' Quality
of Service (QoS) requirements and achieving certain degree of
fairness.
The issue of defining an effective LTE scheduling
algorithm is the subject of many papers in the literature
nowadays. A joint combination of a time and frequency
domain scheduler is proven to be the beneficial approach as
given in [1], [2], [3], [4], where many different combinations of
standard algorithms for the time and the frequency domain are
proposed. In this work, we use OSA (Optimized Service
Aware) scheduler in LTEs OFDMA downlink. The OSA
scheduler was proposed in [5], which was designed to provide
a good balance between multi-QoS provisioning to support
mixes of real-time/non-real-time traffic and overall system
performance maximization in a proportionally fair manner. In
[6] the authors further compare the OSA scheduler against
other well-known schedulers such as Blind-Equal Throughput
(BET), Maximum Throughput (MaxT), and Weighted
Proportional Fair (W-PF) schedulers. However, both [5] and
[6] did not explore the parameter optimization problem of the
OSA scheduler in different network situations, but only with a
default configuration setting. However it becomes more and
more important nowadays for the network operators to
optimize their system automatically. Therefore, the 3GPP
standardization and recent deployment of LTE have
highlighted the need of SON (Self-Organizing Networks)
focused on self-optimizing and self-organizing capabilities
within the network that can bring reductions in operational
costs during deployment as well as during continuing
operations ([7], [8], [9]). A self-optimized MAC scheduling is
aimed to automatically update the optimized settings of the
scheduler in accordance with dynamic changes of traffic and
network conditions over time. However before implementing
self-optimizing functions in the system, it is important to find
out whether they can bring significant gain for the user and
system performance. A few research papers have started
investigating the potential gain of applying self-optimization to
the LTE MAC scheduling. For example, [10] found that there
is quite limited gain of deploying self-optimization to their
MAC scheduling mechanism. However this conclusion is only
based on their selected scheduler mechanism. Noting that
MAC scheduling schemes are not standardized but rather
vendor-specific, the question still remains for other scheduler
schemes.
Compared to our previous work ([5], [6]), in this paper we
are focused on (i) studying the impact of different parameter
setting of the OSA scheduler on the service and system
performance and as well comparing against the well known PF
scheduler under different parameter settings; (ii) exploring the
sensitivity of optimal parameter settings of the OSA scheduler
with respect to various traffic scenarios (traffic mix); and (iii)
finally investigating the potential gain of applying self-
optimization to the OSA scheduler in LTE.
2
This work was done while the second author was working in ComNets,
University of Bremen.
The rest paper is organized as follows: Section II gives a
detailed introduced of the OSA scheduler. Section III describes
the simulation model. The detail results and analysis of OSA
scheduler are presented in section IV and a comparison to the
PF scheduler is given in section V. Section VI discusses the
potential gain of self-optimized algorithm for the OSA
scheduler. The end gives the conclusion and future work.
II. LTE MAC SCHEDULER
The main target of the Optimized Service Aware (OSA)
scheduler is to satisfy the QoS requirements (e.g., delay budget
or loss ratio) of the different LTE bearer types with respect to
different services and traffic classes while at the same time
providing fairness among all users and maximizing the cell
throughput. The OSA general framework is shown in Fig.1.
The OSA scheduler is divided into three main stages: QoS
Class Identifier (QCI) classification, Time Domain Scheduler
(TDS), Frequency Domain Scheduler (FDS).
The TDS deals with issues related to the QoS requirements
and user/bearer prioritization, whereas the FDS is responsible
for spectrum allocation and multi-user diversity exploitation.
The TDS creates a prioritized candidate list of all active
users/bearers ready to transmit within the TTI (Transmission
Time Interval), and then passes this candidate list to the FDS.
In the next step the FDS picks up the users from the list,
starting from the highest priority ones, and allocates them with
the frequency resources (called physical resource blocks-PRBs)
in a way that exploits the different channel conditions of the
different users.
The 3GPP defines nine different QCIs, with four of them
being defined as Guaranteed Bit Rate (GBR) bearers and five
as non-Guaranteed Bit Rate (non-GBR) [11]. In the presented
OSA scheduler framework five different MAC-QoS-Classes
are defined to differentiate and prioritize between the bearers
according to their QoS class. Two classes are defined as GBR
and three as non-GBR. In addition, a high priority queue is also
defined to handle pending HARQ retransmissions.

Fig. 1: Framework of the OSA Scheduler
A. QCI Classification
The first step in the OSA scheduler is the QCI
classification. In each TTI, the scheduler checks the eNodeB
buffer and the HARQ buffer of each user. If one of these
buffers has data, the user is considered for scheduling within
this TTI. The users with pending HARQ retransmissions are
given the highest priority. Each traffic type has different QoS
requirements, thus each bearer is assigned to a single MAC-
QoS class by mapping its QCI. In this work four different QCI
classes are considered; nevertheless this number can easily be
extended. Table I shows an example of mapping of the
different bearer types.
TABLE I. QCI TO MAC-QOS-CLASS MAPPING EXAMPLE
Bearer
Type
Traffic
Type
QCI Class MAC QoS
Class
WQoS
GBR VoIP QCI-1 MAC-QOS-1 -

Non-
GBR
Video
Conf.
QCI-7 MAC-QOS-3 5
HTTP QCI-8 MAC-QOS-4 2
FTP QCI-9 MAC-QOS-5 1

B. Time Domain Scheduling (TDS)
The time domain scheduler is responsible for prioritizing
the bearers based on their QoS requirements. The TDS
separates the bearers prioritization process into two categories:
GBR and non-GBR bearers prioritization. In each TTI the
TDS sorts all active bearers of the different MAC-QoS-Classes
into two separate prioritized candidate lists (one for GBR and
one for non-GBR), which are then passed later to the FDS so as
to start the spectrum allocation process for that respective TTI.
The candidate lists indicate which bearers have to be served
with higher priority. Prioritization is based on a Time Domain
priority metric that depends on the bearer type.
GBR Bearers
The GBR bearers have a guaranteed bit rate requirement
and are normally used for real time applications sensitive to
delays. Voice over IP (VoIP) is a typical example of a GBR
service, where an application end-to-end delay higher than
150ms is considered as bad call quality. In order to meet these
requirements, the GBR bearers are served with strict priority
before the Non-GBR bearers. The OSA scheduler prioritizes
the GBR bearer k based on its buffering delay at the eNodB
and its QoS class according to the following priority metric:
, max arg ) (
, p
k
TD
GBR k
t t P =
(1)
with t
p
(p is for packet) being the HOL (head-of-line) packet
delay in the bearers buffer (i.e. PDCP buffer).
Non-GBR Bearers
The non-GBR bearers normally carry non-real time
services such as buffered video streaming, web browsing (i.e.,
HTTP), file downloads and uploads (i.e., FTP). In the TD the
Non-GBR bearer k is sorted in the Non-GBR candidate list
according to the following priority metric:

=
j QoS
k
k
k
TD
NGBR k
W
t
t
t P
_ ,
) (
) (
max arg ) (

(2)
Here ) (t
k
represents an estimate of the normalized
average channel condition of bearer k and ) (t
k
is the
normalized average throughput estimate of the bearer k at time
instant t. W
QoS_j
is the QoS weight of the j
th
MAC QoS class,
which is used to enforce priorities and differentiate between
QoS classes. Table I shows the weighting factor in accordance
to the bearer type.
The normalized average channel condition is normalized in
the range between 0 and 1. It is calculated using the
exponential moving average formula as follows:

max
) (
/ 1 ) 1 ( ) / 1 1 ( ) (
SINR
t SINR
t t
k
k k
+ =
(3)
Therein denotes the size of the exponential moving average
window and can be tuned. SINR
k
is the instantaneous channel
condition of the bearer k and SINR
max
is a normalization factor
used to normalize the channel condition. The average
throughput estimate ) (t
k
is also calculated using the
exponential moving average formula given in equation (4).

+
=
otherwise t
t time at served
is k bearer if t
t
t
k
k
k
k
) 1 ( ) / 1 1 (
) (
/ 1 ) 1 ( ) / 1 1 (
) (
max

(4)

k
(t) is the instantaneous achievable throughput at time instant
t and
max
as a normalization factor, which is defined to be the
maximum throughput that can be achieved if all PRBs are
used under perfect channel conditions.
C. Frequency Domain Scheduling (FDS)
The frequency domain scheduler is responsible for
distributing the radio interface resources (PRBs) among the
different bearers that are sorted by the TD scheduler. The FDS
uses the candidate lists provided by the TDS to choose which
bearers should be served within the specific TTIs. The FDS
starts first with the GBR candidate list, since they have the
highest QoS requirements. The FDS uses an algorithm similar
to the well known Round Robin for the allocation process: one
PRB at a time, with some channel conditions optimization. One
PRB is allocated first to the highest priority GBR bearer and
then another PRB is allocated to the 2nd highest bearer and so
on until all PRBs are distributed. The distribution is done by
assigning the bearers their best PRBs out of the spectrum; the
best PRB is measured in terms of their SINR value (the higher
the better). This is continued in iterations until all GBR bearers
have been served within this TTI. Scheduling the non-GBR
bearers is very similar to the GBR procedure with only one
difference: only a subset of non-GBR bearers are chosen out of
the non-GBR candidate list for the PRBs iterative allocation
procedure, instead of the complete candidate list, as in the GBR
case. This subset is normally chosen to be the maximum
number of non-GBR bearers N to be scheduled in one TTI.
This procedure was described in greater detail in [5].
D. OSA Optimization Parameters
There are mainly three parameters that can be tuned and
optimized in the OSA scheduler. In this work we investigate
the impact of the setting of these parameters on the service and
system performance in different scenarios, and further derive
the optimal parameter setting of the OSA scheduler.
1) Moving average window size: (in number of TTIs)
2) Maximum number of non-GBR bearers per TTI: N
3) QoSWeight of the MAC-QoS class j: W
QoS_j

To decide the optimal settings, we aim to make a fair trade-
off between providing proper QoS for difference services
according to their priority and system performance
maximization (i.e. to attain maximum resource utilization in
terms of maximum cell throughput). Besides, we want to avoid
long window size, which may not be able to properly capture
the rapid channel changes. Therefore, in this work we define a
utility u to determine the optimum settings.
+ =

j
j QoS j
W u
_
(5)
In the above equation,
j
stands for the gain on the
application quality for the service j, W
QoS_j
is the QoS weight of
the service j. The gain on the application quality per service
j

is calculated in equation (6), where
i
is the improvement of
the application quality using certain parameter setting and

i_worst
is the worst application quality among all settings from
the measurements. represents the achievable gain on the
system throughput, which is calculated in the similar way, as
the ratio of the relative increase on the cell throughput under a
configured parameter setting to the lowest one of all settings
from the measurements.
worst i i i _
/ = (6)
Besides, in order to avoid using too large window size, in
the above utility we introduce , which is the normalized
window size in TTIs (in log scale) as a ratio to the maximum
allowed window size
max
(in this work
max
= 10000 TTIs), as
given in equation (7).
) log( / ) log(
max
=
(7)
In equation (5), the parameters , , and are weighting
factors which can be used to scale performance metrics to
comparable ranges and express their relative priority. It is up to
the network operators to decide their importance and priority.
In this work, they are all equal and set to 1.
III. SIMULATION MODEL
The design overview of the LTE simulation model is shown
in Fig. 2. The model has been simplified by focusing on the
user-plane end-to-end performance analysis.

Fig. 2: LTE OPNET simulation model
The figure shows that the core modeling represented by the
PDN-GW and aGW. The E-UTRAN part is represented by the
transport routers, the eNodeBs and the UEs. All user-plan
protocols in the simulator have been implemented according to
the 3GPP Rel8 specifications. The model also supports several
mobility models for the users: e.g. Random Way Point, Radom
Walk and Random direction. In addition, a proper channel
model has been implemented in the simulation model. More
information on this LTE simulation model can be found in [5].
IV. RESULT ANALYSIS
In this section we present detailed simulation results to
analyze the impact of different parameters of the OSA
scheduler on the service and system performance. The
simulation parameters and the traffic models of difference
services are summarized in Table II.
A. Impact of Moving average Window Size
This section studies the impact of the optimal window size
of the scheduler on the service and cell performances. We
consider a scenario with 20 Video users and 10 FTP users
(their traffic models are given in Table II). Both video and FTP
services belong to the non-GBR class and the video service is
given a higher QoS priority than the FTP service (see Table I).
The number of non-GBR bearers that can be scheduled within
one TTI is set to 5. In this investigation, we change the window
size from 2 TTI (2ms) up to 10000 TTI (10s).
TABLE II. MAIN SIMULATION PARAMETERS
Parameter Configurations
Cell Layout 1 eNodeB with 5 MHz (~25 PRBs)
Single Cell (350m cell radius), 30 UEs in a cell
Channel Model Macroscopic Pathloss model [12], Correlated
Slow Fading [13] and Jakes-like Fast Fading
model with user profile ITU-Veh. A.
Mobility Model Random Way Point (RWP)
with vehicular speed 120 km/h
OSA Scheduler Moving average
window size (in TTIs)
2, 5, 10, 100,
1000 (default), 10000
Number of non-GBR
bearers /TTI
1 ~ 16
QoS Weight See Table I
Video Traffic Model
Frame rate
Frame size
24 frame/sec
frame size: 2975 bytes
HTTP Traffic Model
Number of pages/session 1 (with 1 object of size 1MByte in each page)
Reading Time 12 sec
FTP Traffic Model
Inter-request time
File Size
Inter-request time = uniform(1,3) seconds
file size = 10MByte
Fig. 3(a) shows the impact of the window size parameter on
the video performance in terms of the video packet end-to-end
delay. It is seen that when choosing a larger window size (100
TTIs), the average video end to end delay and its standard
deviation decreases, which means that we achieve an improved
video experience. However, when the window size is further
increased from 100 TTIs to 10000 TTIs, the video performance
stays constant. On the other hand, it can be seen in Fig. 3(b)
that the FTP performance gets worse when a larger window
size is chosen, but similarly its performance is not further
degraded when the chosen window size larger than 100 TTIs.
2TTI 5TTI 10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
100
200
300
400
Video end-to-end delay (ms)
Window size (#TTIs)
V
i
d
e
o

d
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)

(a) Average video packet delay (ms)
2TTI 5TTI 10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
FTP download time (s)
Window size (#TTIs)
D
L

t
i
m
e

(
s
)

(b) Average FTP download time (s)
2TTI 5TTI 10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
5
10
15
20
Cell throughput (Mbps)
Window size (#TTIs)
T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
M
b
p
s
)

(c) Cell throughput (Mbps)
2TTI 5TTI 10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
4
Optimization Utility
Window size (#TTIs)
U
t
i
l
i
t
y

(d) Optimization utility
Fig.3: Impact of window size on (a) video performance, (b) FTP performance,
(c) cell throughput, (d) optimization utility
This can be explained as follows. From equation (3) and
(4) it can be seen that with a larger moving average window
size, the estimate of the average channel conditions and the
average throughput depends more on the history (the estimate
from previous TTIs) and less on the instantaneous throughput
and channel condition of the current TTI. This also means that
when choosing a larger moving average window size, the
estimate of the channel conditions and the throughput get
closer to the average value since it is considering the changes
over a longer time period. But with smaller window size (lower
than 100 TTIs) the estimate of the throughput and the channel
conditions will be more dependent on the instantaneous values
and thus result in higher variation of the user performance. For
the FTP service this means, due to its elastic traffic property,
that when there is a higher variation of user throughput - by
configuring a smaller window size - we can achieve more
multiplexing gain and, in turn, better performance. However,
the nature of the video traffic is constant and therefore it suffers
from a higher variation of the instantaneous channel conditions
due to a smaller window size and results in higher video end-
to-end delay. That is why the video performance is decreased
whereas the FTP performance gets improved when the window
size is reduced from 100 TTIs to 2 TTIs. When the window
size is larger than 100 TTIs, the estimate of the channel
conditions and throughput become stable and are close to their
average values. Therefore, the performances of both services
become stable. In addition to service performances, Fig. 3(c)
shows that the achieved cell throughput is higher with smaller
window size (less than 100 TTIs). This is due to the additional
multiplexing gain from the FTP traffic and achieved higher
spectral efficiency. Similarly, when the window size is larger
than 100 TTIs the cell performance stays constant. Fig. 3(d)
illustrates the calculated optimization utility following equation
(5), where the weighting factors , , and are all equal and
set to 1. It is seen clearly that we get the highest utility at 100
TTIs, where the achieved performance gain of video is 80%
and the gain of FTP is 1.5%. Thus, for this case the optimal
window size for this scenario is 100 TTIs. As seen from the
above results, with 100 TTIs we can achieve minimum delay
for the video service though at the cost of longer FTP
download time and slightly lower cell throughput. For our
objectives this is a proper trade-off between the different
criteria, since our first priority is to provide the best QoS for
the video service which has much higher QoS priority than the
best-effort FTP service in this case.
B. Impact of the number of non-GBRs
This section investigates the service performance and
achievable cell throughput with respect to the maximum
number of non-GBR bearers per TTI (parameter N). We take
the same example scenario as given above, i.e. 20 Video users
and 10 FTP users. The moving average window size is set to
the default setting of 1000 TTIs. In this investigation, we vary
the parameter N (i.e. the number of non-GBR bearers to be
scheduled per TTI) between 1 and 16. It can be seen from Fig.
4(a) and (b) that both video and FTP service performance is
improved when N is increased from 1 to 7. This is because,
when N is set to 1 (each TTI only one non-GBR bearer can be
scheduled), the scheduled bearer is not able to use all 25 PRBs
and moreover there is no multi-user diversity gain. When N is
increased from 1 to 7, each bearer will get less PRBs and thus
the PRB efficiency (bit/s per PRB) is decreased according to
3GPP, but in total more PRBs are used (i.e. utilization of PRBs
is improved) and additional multi-user diversity gain is
achieved. Furthermore, setting a higher N will give higher
multi-user diversity gain which is more important in terms of
service performance than the impact of the decreased PRB
efficiency. Hence, the performance of both services is
enhanced. Similarly, the obtained cell throughput also gets
increased due to the higher multi-user diversity gain achieved
by increasing N as shown in Fig. 4(c).
1 3 5 7 8 9 10 12 14 15 16
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Video end-to-end delay (ms)
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
V
i
d
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d
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a
y

(
m
s
)

(a) Average video packet delay (ms)
1 3 5 7 8 9 10 12 14 15 16
0
100
200
300
400
FTP download time (s)
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
D
L

t
i
m
e

(
s
)

(b) Average FTP download time (s)
1 3 5 7 8 9 10 12 14 15 16
0
5
10
15
20
Cell throughput (Mbps)
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
M
b
p
s
)

(c) Cell throughput (Mbps)
1 3 5 7 8 9 10 12 14 15 16
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Optimization Utility
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
U
t
i
l
i
t
y

(d) Optimization utility
Fig.4: Impact of N on (a) video performance, (b) FTP performance, (c) cell
throughput, (d) optimization utility
Nevertheless, when N is further increased from 8 to 16, it is
seen from Fig. 4(a) that the video performance is decreased.
The reason is that there are less PRBs per TTI available that
can be allocated to each video bearer. On the other hand, the
FTP performance shown in Fig. 4(b) is not influenced by
further increasing N from 8 to 16, but rather it is approaching
constant value close to the best performance. The reason is that
whenever the radio resources are fully utilized, the average
FTP performance is merely dependent on the total number of
FTP users in the cell other than the number of FTP bearers to
be served per TTI due to the elastic property of TCP traffic.
With N=8 the maximum multi-user diversity gain has been
reached. Therefore, with further increasing N the FTP
performance and the cell throughput remain constant at their
maximum. Fig. 4(d) gives the calculated optimization utility
following equation (5), where the weighting factors , , and
are all set to 1. It is shown that in this scenario the optimal
value for the parameter N is 7 non-GBR bearers.
In addition to the above presented results, we also studied
the sensitivity of the parameter settings of the OSA scheduler
with respect to various traffic characteristics, and moreover
investigated the impact of the QoS weights on the performance
of different services of various QoS classes. However due to
space limitations we do not show all results but summarize the
main findings below.
1) In data-only scenarios, the optimum window size and the
number of non-GBR users per TTI are not sensitive to the
file sizes and file size distributions.
2) The setting of QoS weights has significant influence on the
service performance of different QoS classes. By setting a
relative higher weighting factor for a single QoS class, its
performance will be improved at the cost of performance
degradation of the lower priority class.
3) By adding the GBR service together with the non-GBR
services, the performance of the GBR service is
guaranteed since it has the highest priority, and its
performance is also independent of the configured
parameter settings. But for the non-GBR services, the
impact of the parameter settings on their performances as
we presented above needs to be considered.
V. COMPARISION OF OSA AND PF SCHEDULER
In this section we compare the OSA scheduler against the
well known PF (Proportional Fair) scheduler under different
settings of window size (in Fig. 5) and maximum number of
non-GBR bearers to be severed per TTI (in Fig. 6), using the
same scenario given above ( 20 Video users and 10 FTP users).
From Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, we can observe that both schedulers
have similar trend of change (increase or decrease) on the
service performances and cell throughput with the increase of
window size and the maximum number of non-GBR bearers
per TTI, which follows the same tendency of the results
presented in section IV.
By comparing the performance of OSA and PF scheduler, it
is seen that the OSA scheduler is indeed service-aware, which
guarantees a much better performance for high priority video
service though at the cost of reducing the performance of lower
priority FTP service and cell throughput. In comparison to
OSA scheduler, the PF scheduler is based upon maintaining a
balance between fairness and system throughput, however it
does not consider the differences of various services and their
QoS requirements. Therefore, it is not able to provide a proper
balance between multi-QoS provisioning for the mixed real-
time and non-real-time traffic according to their priorities, and
hence it is not well suitable for the cases of multi-services with
different QoS priority and requirements.
10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
50
100
150
200
250
Window size (#TTIs)
V
i
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d
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(
m
s
)
Video end-to-end delay (ms)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
Window size (#TTIs)
D
L

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)
FTP download time (s)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

10TTI 100TTI 1000TTI 10000TTI
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25
Window size (#TTIs)
T
h
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(
M
b
p
s
)
Cell throughput (Mbps)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

Fig.5: Comparing OSA against PF scheduler over different window sizes:
(a) video performance, (b) FTP performance, (c) cell throughput
VI. POTENTIAL GAIN OF SELF-OPTIMIZATION
From the results presented in section IV, we have seen that
(=100TTIs, N=7) is the best settings for the window size and
the number of non-GBR users per TTI of the OSA scheduler
for the example traffic scenario. Without self-optimization of
the scheduler, we will use this optimal setting for all scenarios.
In the following we compare this case with the case in which
the scheduler is self-optimized. Our assumption is that the self-
optimized algorithm is able to adapt the optimal setting in
every situation.
In Table III we gave the optimal settings for three other
traffic scenarios with various mixes of service types. For each
traffic scenario, the obtained optimal scheduler parameter
settings are different. Comparing to the case (without self-
optimization) in which the setting of the scheduler (=100TTIs,
N=7) is fixed, the achieved gain on the video performance
using their individual optimal settings in the three different
traffic scenarios is quite significant. Though there is a slight
decrease in the performance of FTP (Best-Effort service) and
cell throughput, the resultant overall utility on the performance
gain is still considerably high in case if we adapt the optimal
settings for every situation. That also implies that there are
certainly potentials for applying the self-optimized algorithm
for the MAC scheduler.

1 3 5 7 9 15
0
50
100
150
200
250
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
V
i
d
e
o

d
e
l
a
y

(
m
s
)
Video end-to-end delay (ms)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

1 3 5 7 9 15
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
D
L

t
i
m
e

(
s
)
FTP download time (s)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

1 3 5 7 9 15
0
5
10
15
20
25
# nGBR bearers served per TTI
T
h
r
o
u
g
h
p
u
t

(
M
b
p
s
)
Cell throughput (Mbps)
OSA Scheduler
PF Scheduler

Fig.6: Comparing OSA against PF scheduler over different N: (a) video
performance, (b) FTP performance, (c) cell throughput
TABLE III. GAIN OF SELF-OPTIMIZATION OF MAC SCHEDULER
Scenario Optimal
settings
Video FTP
/HTTP
Cell
through.
Utility
gain
25 FTP UEs /
5 video UEs
=1000TTIs
N=3
22.9% -1.5% -2% 110%
2 FTP UEs /
20 video UEs
=5TTIs
N=7
8.6% -1% 0% 42%
10 FTP UEs /
10 HTTP UEs/
10 video UEs
=1000TTIs
N = 3
17.8%
HTTP: 1%
FTP: -7.6%
-2.6% 80.8%

Besides, there is also a potential for self-optimizing the
QoS weights for various QoS classes assuming that each has a
different QoS requirement. In different traffic situations, the
carried traffic amount of each QoS class is usually different
and may change over the time. When we have fixed radio
resources in the cell, the scheduler is responsible for
distributing the resources among the different QoS classes
according to their priorities (QoS weights) and traffic changes
so as to accommodate their traffic demand and as well to
ensure their individual QoS requirements. For this purpose, we
will need a self-optimized algorithm to track the traffic changes
of each QoS class and measure their performances, and then
according to the measurements to adapt the QoS weighting
factors for all QoS classes automatically such that the QoS
requirements of each QoS class are satisfied while targeting the
best system performance at the same time. For example, if the
traffic demand of one QoS class increases and it is not able to
meet its QoS requirements with the current allocated resources,
then we need to assign higher QoS weight for this class to
allocate it more resources. This will be left for the future work
to develop such self-optimization algorithms.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper we explore the optimization potential of the
LTE MAC scheduler by investigating the impact of parameter
adjustments on the service and system performances. By
comparing to the well known PF scheduler, we can see a clear
advantage of OSA scheduler in terms of QoS-aware, which is
important to support multi-service LTE networks. Furthermore,
we study the sensitivity of the optimal parameter settings for
the OSA scheduler with respect to various traffic scenarios
(traffic mix). We find potential gain in applying self-
optimization to the QoS-aware MAC scheduling mechanism,
which justifies the development of self-optimization algorithms
for the scheduler. As a future research topic we intend to
develop self-optimization solutions for the OSA scheduler and
even explore the potential of other types of schedulers.
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