  In this paper, we propose fairness-oriented packet scheduling (PS) schemes
with power-efficient control mechanism for future packet radio systems. In
general, the radio resource management functionality plays an important role in
new OFDMA based networks. The control of the network resource division among
the users is performed by packet scheduling functionality based on maximizing
cell coverage and capacity satisfying, and certain quality of service
requirements. Moreover, multiantenna transmit-receive schemes provide
additional flexibility to packet scheduler functionality. In order to mitigate
inter-cell and co-channel interference problems in OFDMA cellular networks soft
frequency reuse with different power masks patterns is used. Stemming from the
earlier enhanced proportional fair scheduler studies for single-input
multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) systems, we
extend the development of efficient packet scheduling algorithms by adding
transmit power considerations in the overall priority metrics calculations and
scheduling decisions. Furthermore, we evaluate the proposed scheduling schemes
by simulating practical orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)
based packet radio system in terms of throughput, coverage and fairness
distribution among users. As a concrete example, under reduced overall transmit
power constraint and unequal power distribution for different sub-bands, we
demonstrate that by using the proposed power-aware multi-user scheduling
schemes, significant coverage and fairness improvements in the order of 70% and
20%, respectively, can be obtained, at the expense of average throughput loss
of only 15%.

Networking and Internet Architecture