Packet scheduling in 3.5G high-speed downlink packet access networks: Breadth and depth

Forecasts for emerging mobile device markets anticipate that bandwidth will be squeezed by demanding applications like multimedia on demand. This will spur the need for data rates beyond what the upcoming 3G wireless cellular systems such as UNITS can offer. To boost the support for such high data rates, HSDPA, labeled as a 3.5G wireless system, has been introduced in Release 5 of UNITS technical specifications. HSDPA is a definite step toward meeting the "anywhere, anytime, and in any form" 4G communication concept. HSDPA promises a peak data rate of up to 10 Mb/s, five times larger than the data rate offered by 3G systems. In order to support such high data rates, HSDPA relies on many new technologies, among which is packet scheduling. In this article we provide breadth and depth related issues of packet scheduling in HSDPA, discuss state-of-the-art HSDPA scheduling algorithms in terms of their objectives, advantages, and limitations, and suggest further research issues that need to be addressed. In addition, we propose a packet scheduling algorithm for data traffic in HSDPA. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.