In this paper, we focus on the adaptive resource allocation issue for uplink OFDMA systems. The resources are allocated according to a proportional fairness criterion, which can strike an alterable balance between fairness and efficiency. Optimization theory is used to analyze the multi-constraint resource allocation problem and some heuristic characteristics about the optimal solution are obtained. To deal with the cohesiveness of the necessary conditions, we resort to bargaining theory that has been deeply investigated in game theory. Firstly, we summarize some assumptions about bargaining theory and show their similarities with the resource allocation process. Then we propose a priority-ranked bargaining model, whose primary contribution is applying the economic thought to the resource allocation process. A priority-ranked bargaining algorithm (PRBA) is subsequently proposed to permit the base station to auction the subcarriers one by one according to the users' current priority. By adjusting the predefined rate ratio flexibly, PRBA can achieve different degrees of fairness among the users' capacity. Simulation results show that PRBA can achieve similar performance of the max-min scheme and the NBS scheme in the case of appropriate predefined rate ratio.

A parallel multiplexing scheduling (PMS) scheme is proposed for distributed antenna systems (DAS), which greatly improves average system throughput due to multi-user diversity and multi-user multiplexing. However, PMS has poor fairness because of the use of the "best channel selection" criteria in the scheduler. Thus we present a parallel proportional fair scheduling (PPFS) scheme, which combines PMS with proportional fair scheduling (PFS) to achieve a tradeoff between average throughput and fairness. In PPFS, the "relative signal to noise ratio (SNR)" is employed as a metric to select the user instead of the "relative throughput" in the original PFS. And only partial channel state information (CSI) is fed back to the base station (BS) in PPFS. Moreover, there are multiple users selected to transmit simultaneously at each slot in PPFS, while only one user occupies all channel resources at each slot in PFS. Consequently, PPFS improves fairness performance of PMS greatly with a relatively small loss of average throughput compared to PFS.

Several scheduling algorithms have been proposed for the downlink of a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system with High Data Rate (HDR). Modified Largest Weighted Delay First (M-LWDF) scheduling algorithm selects a user according to the user current channel condition, user head-of-line packet delay and user Quality of Service (QoS) requirement. Proportional Fair (PF) scheduling algorithm has also been proposed for CDMA/HDR system and it selects a user according to the ratio of the user current channel rate and the user average channel rate, which provides good performance in terms of fairness. However, when variable bit rate (VBR) traffic is considered under different channel conditions for each user, both schedulers' performance decrease. M-LWDF scheduler can not guarantee the QoS requirement to be achieved and PF scheduler can not achieve a good fairness among the users. In this work, we propose a new scheduling algorithm to enhance M-LWDF and PF schedulers performance. Proposed scheduler selects a user according to the user input traffic characteristic, user current channel condition and user QoS requirement, which consists of a delay value with a maximum violation probability. We consider the well-known effective bandwidth expression, which takes into account the user QoS requirement and the user input traffic characteristics, to select a user to be scheduled. Properties of the proposed scheduling algorithm are investigated through simulations with constant bit rate (CBR) and VBR flows and performance comparisons with M-LWDF and PF schedulers. The results show a better performance of the proposed scheduler compared with M-LWDF and PF schedulers.

We study the interaction of TCP and the proportional fair scheduling algorithm in wireless networks. We show that the additive increase and multiplicative decrease algorithm of TCP can favor bad channel users, which results in inefficient use of radio resources. To remedy the problem, a proportional queue management scheme is proposed. The effectiveness of the algorithm is shown by simulations.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is the technique for the next generation wireless networks, whose enhanced capacity is to serve a combination of traffic with diverse QoS requirements. To realize this, the resource allocation scheme has to be carefully designed so that the instantaneous channel condition, QoS provision, and the network utilization are integrated. In this paper, we propose the resource allocation scheme for downlink traffic of 2 classes; guaranteed and non-guaranteed, having different traffic contracts. We provide guaranteed throughput for the guaranteed class by considering the cost incurred from serving this class. Then, we formulate the assignment problem with the objective of minimizing this cost. For the non-guaranteed class, we aim to maximize network utilization and to maintain throughput fairness, by employing Proportional Fairness (PF) utility function and emphasizing on the portion of network resource that the user received and the individual user's queue length. We use a heuristic approach to schedule users' data into the downlink subframe by exploiting multi-user multi-channel diversity to utilize system's bandwidth efficiently. Intensive simulation shows that our scheme differentiates classes of traffic and provides satisfied throughput, lower packet drop rate, and lower queuing delay to the guaranteed class, comparing with those of the non-guaranteed class. Furthermore, the results also show that the scheme is fair to users in the same class in both throughput and service time.

This paper considers a proportional fairness of end-to-end session rates in a multihop wireless network through the rate control framework. In multihop wireless networks, there are two classes of rate control problem. One focuses in optimizing the transmission attempt probabilities at the lower layers, but not the transmit powers while other problem is closely related to jointly optimal congestion control and power control. Proportional fairness is a fundamental concept in flow control problems. In this paper, we give in-depth analysis and show that the optimal solutions of these problems are proportionally fair provided that the objective functions are suitably chosen.

In this paper, we investigate the proportional fair scheduling (PFS) problem for multiuser OFDM systems, considering the impact of packet length. Packet length influences scheduling schemes in a way that each scheduled packet should be ensured to be completely transmitted within the scheduled frames. We formulate the PFS problem as an optimization problem. Based on the observations on the structure of optimal solutions, we propose a heuristic scheduling algorithm that consists of two stages. First, subcarriers are allocated among users without considering the packet length constraint. Then on the second stage, subcarrier readjustment is done in a way that surplus subcarriers from length-satisfied users are released and allocated among length-unsatisfied users. The objective is to provide proportional fairness among users while guaranteeing complete transmission of each scheduled packet. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has quite close performance to the optimal scheme in terms of Multi-carrier Proportional Fairness Measure (MCPFM), throughput and average packet delay.

We present a TCP flow level performance evaluation on error rate aware scheduling algorithms in Evolved UTRA and UTRAN networks. With the introduction of the error rate, which is the probability of transmission failure under a given wireless condition and the instantaneous transmission rate, the transmission efficiency can be improved without sacrificing the balance between system performance and user fairness. The performance comparison with and without error rate awareness is carried out dependant on various TCP traffic models, user channel conditions, schedulers with different fairness constraints, and automatic repeat request (ARQ) types. The results indicate that error rate awareness can make the resource allocation more reasonable and effectively improve the system and individual performance, especially for poor channel condition users.

Fairness is one of the most important features of a rate allocation strategy. Proportional fairness criterion has been recently proposed by F. P. Kelly and his colleagues. In this paper, we have proposed a two-level hierarchical technique which allocates proportionally-fair rates to the network elastic users. Part of the network links which are used commonly by the end-users and are congestion prone, constitute the higher (first) level of the hierarchy. In this level, the users with common path in the network are grouped as virtual users. End-users and remaining network links constitute the lower (second) level of hierarchy. To improve the convergence rate of the algorithm, a combination of Jacobi method and fuzzy techniques is deployed in the higher level of hierarchy. Implementing such fast algorithms in the higher level (which is topologically simpler than the whole network), reduces the computational complexity with respect to the use of such algorithms in the whole network. Additionally, the lower level penalty function computation is done once in each N iterations, which reduces the computational complexity furthermore. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms that of Kelly in the convergence speed.

Performance evaluation criterion is one of the most important issues for design of network traffic control mechanisms and algorithms. Due to multiple performance objectives of network traffic control, performance evaluation criteria must include multiple performance metrics executed simultaneously, which is called integrated performance evaluation criteria. In this paper, we analyze various performance metrics of network traffic control, and propose three integrated performance evaluation criteria. One is the improvement on original Power formula; our new Power formula is based on the multi-service-class model. Another is about the fairness of user's QoS (Quality of Service) requirements (queuing delay and loss rate); especially the detailed discussion on Proportional Fairness Principle is given. And the third one is the integration of preceding two, in which the throughput, queuing delay, packet loss rate, and the fairness are considered simultaneously.

The differentiated services (Diffserv) architecture is a potential solution for providing quality of service (QoS) on the Internet. Most existing studies focus on providing service differentiation among few service classes. In this paper, we propose an approach which can achieve per-flow weighted fair rate allocation in a differentiated services network. Following the design philosophy of the Diffserv model, in the proposed approach core routers do not need to keep per-flow information. An edge router adjusts the transmission rate of a flow based on the feedback carried on control packets, which are inserted by the ingress edge router and returned by the egress edge router. Core routers periodically estimate the fair share rate of each virtual flow and mark the results in control packets. We use both simulations and analysis to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach. The analytical results show that our approach allows a system to converge to weighted fair rate allocations in limited time. Through the simulation results, we can further validate the analytical results, and demonstrate that better throughput can be achieved.

Differentiated services (Diffserv) model is one of the possible solutions for providing quality of service (QoS) on the Internet. Most existing approaches assume that the packet loss is an indication of network congestion and thus reduce the sending rates of sources. For wireless networks, the assumption is not proper since packet losses may be caused by other reasons, such as fading and interference of the signal. Therefore, these approaches do not work well in wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an approach which is able to provide service differentiation in wireless environments. In our approach, the rate share of a connection is determined by the associated weight. By keeping a proper amount of extra data in the network, the proposed approach can achieve weighted proportional fairness, which can provide selective QoS without any particular support from the network. We use the ns simulator to evaluate our approach. Simulation results show the validity of the proposed approach.