Comparison of Strategies for Signaling of Scheduling Assignments in Wireless OFDMA

This paper considers transmission of scheduling information in OFDMA-based cellular communication systems such as 3GPP long-term evolution (LTE). These systems provide efficient usage of radio resources by allowing users to be scheduled dynamically in both frequency and time. This requires considerable amounts of scheduling information to be sent to the users. The paper compares two basic transmission strategies: transmitting a separate scheduling message to each user versus broadcasting a joint scheduling message to all users. Different scheduling granularities are considered, as well as different scheduling algorithms. The schemes are evaluated in the context of the LTE downlink using multiuser system simulations, assuming a full-buffer situation. The results show that separate transmission of the scheduling information requires a slightly lower overhead than joint broadcasting, when proportional fair scheduling is employed and the users are spread out over the cell area. The results also indicate that the scheduling granularity standardized for LTE provides a good trade-off between scheduling granularity and overhead.©2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE. Reza Moosavi, Jonas Eriksson, Erik G. Larsson, Niclas Wiberg, Pål Frenger and Fredrik Gunnarsson, Comparison of Strategies for Signaling of Scheduling Assignments in Wireless OFDMA, 2010, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2010.206658