TCP-Aware Scheduling in LTE Networks

Abstract

Designing scheduling algorithms that work in synergy with TCP is a challenging problem. In this thesis, we focus on Max Weight (MW) schedulers and show that contrary to its performance with inelastic traffic, MW schedulers may not perform well in LTE networks in the presence of TCP traffic. We then design two new schedulers which both are based on MW. The first proposed scheduler, called Q-MW, is tailored to TCP dynamics by giving higher priority to TCP flows whose queue at the base station is very small to encourage them to send more data at a faster rate. The second proposed scheduler is named H-MW in which some of the subcarriers with low channel quality are left unassigned to improve the total MW scheduler throughput. In the last part of the thesis, we consider how LTE handovers affect the performance of scheduling algorithms under TCP traffic.