Rate Adaptive Resource Allocation and Utility-Based Packet

There  are  several  approaches  for Radio Resource Management  (RRM)  in multicarrier  cellular  systems. This work analyzes and compares two of them: rate-adaptive resource allocation (sub-carriers and power) based on instantaneous data rates, and utility-based packet scheduling based on average data rates. A fundamental RRM problem in wireless cellular  networks  was  chosen  as  a  background  to  evaluate  the  aforementioned  approaches:  the  trade-off  between system spectral efficiency and fairness among the users when opportunistic allocation is used. Extensive system-level simulations  were  performed  and  important  network  metrics  such  as  total  cell  throughput,  mean  user  throughput, system  fairness  index  and  user  satisfaction were  assessed.  It was  concluded  from  the  simulation  results  that  it  is possible  to  achieve  an  efficient  trade-off  between  resource  efficiency  and  fairness  using  any  of  the  two  RRM approaches. However, utility-based packet scheduling algorithms based on average data  rates have  the advantage of presenting higher user satisfaction with less computational complexity.