Optimal Threshold Scheduler for Cellular Networks

The conventional wireless schedulers of Unicast and Multicast either fulfill multiuser diversity or broadcast gain, but not both together. To achieve optimal system throughput we need a scheduler that exploits both the multiuser diversity gain and the Multicasting gain simultaneously. We first propose a new medianthreshold scheduler that selects all users having instantaneous SNR above the median value for transmission. The system rate equation for the proposed scheduler is also derived. We then optimize the median-threshold so that it performs well over an entire SNR range. With the help of simulation results we compare performance of the proposed scheduler with schedulers like Unicast, Multicast and other Opportunistic Multicast Schedulers (OMS) which are the best schedulers in terms of throughput and show that the proposed optimized threshold scheme outperforms all of them.