A lookback scheduling framework for long‐term quality of service over multiple cells

In current cellular networks, schedulers allocate wireless channel resources to users based on instantaneous channel gains and short‐term moving averages of user rates and queue lengths. By using only such short‐term information, schedulers ignore the users' service history in previous cells and, thus, cannot guarantee long‐term quality of service (QoS) when users traverse multiple cells with varying load and capacity. In this paper, we propose a new long‐term lookback scheduling (LLS) framework, which extends conventional short‐term scheduling with long‐term (QoS) information from previously traversed cells. We demonstrate the application of (LLS) for common channel aware, as well as channel and queue‐aware schedulers. The developed long‐term schedulers also provide a controllable trade‐off between emphasizing the immediate user (QoS) or the long‐term measures. Our simulation results show high gains in long‐term (QoS) without sacrificing short‐term user requirements. Therefore, the proposed scheduling approach improves subscriber satisfaction and increases operational efficiency. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.