Co-operative scheduling for balancing throughput gains and fairness in cell-edge enhancement schemes for wireless networks

Multi-point reception techniques for enhancing cell-edge throughput are currently under standardization in cellular wireless standards as Single Frequency Dual Cell (SFDC) [1] in 3GPP and as Single Carrier Multi Link(SCML) [2] in 3GPP2. Unlike soft-handover operation, User Equipment(UEs) at cell-edge (handover zone) can independently request data from adjacent cells in multi point operation. Although the cell-edge UEs are benefited, there is a trade-off with fairness towards the in-cell UEs that get served only by a single serving cell, and the overall cell throughput and this paper proposes a joint scheduling algorithm to address this trade-off. To support practical implementation of such a scheme in current multi-vendor wireless networks, the cells participating in multi-point operation need to share throughput feedback via standards based mechanisms. Numerical results through computer simulation based on system parameters conforming to 3GPP2 evaluation methodology is presented. The results show that the proposed scheme can provide higher throughput for cell-edge users while maintaining the fairness towards other users in the system. © 2013 IEEE.