LTE, LTE-Advanced and WiMAX: Towards IMT-Advanced Networks

17

Supporting Quality of Service

Quality of Service (QoS) handling plays an important role in IMT-Advanced network. Chapters 6 and 12 detailed the procedures described by standardization bodies, respectively IEEE and 3GPP, for the QoS handling and bandwidth reservation signaling. Standards, however, do not specify how vendors and operators should implement the schedulers that oversee the prioritization of the different device and user flows, in addition to regulating both access and interference levels in the network. Naturally, such void instigates many researchers to design schedulers that enable IMT-Advanced networks to fulfill their operational objectives. And while this book is aimed at describing the functionalities of the IMT-Advanced technologies, the crucial role of scheduling mandated a dedicated treatment.

The chapter is organized as follows. Section 17.1 discusses scheduling in WiMAX networks, and provides an overview and evaluation of the different proposal that have been suggested for its scheduling. Section 17.2 provides takes on a similar view of scheduling in LTE and LTE-Advanced. Given that the 3GPP technologies utilize different multi-carrier access techniques, OFDMA for the uplink and SC-FDMA, the section discusses scheduling for each connection direction together with its relevant requirements. Section 17.3 provides a further view of evaluations that have been towards comparing the performance of LTE/-A and WiMax in terms of VoIP scheduling and power consumption, ...