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Smart Scheduler
Contents
1.Introduction
10
3.2Centralized RAN
11
12
13
5.Summary
14
6.Abbreviations
15
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1.Introduction
With more than 500 million LTE subscribers as of early 2015, LTE has become
the fastest adopted mobile broadband technology and is about to evolve
for the connectivity needs of the programmable world, for serving human
users as well as the Internet of Things. LTE in FDD and TDD mode (TD-LTE)
is designed to work with all the cells using the same frequency, a so-called
frequency reuse of one. This provides the highest network efficiency and
enables high data rates close to the base station. The main drawback with
frequency reuse of one is the high interference experienced when the terminal
is between two cells.
Boosting cell edge performance is the main purpose of Smart Scheduler. It
also enhances the average data rate and system capacity by taking signal
fading and interference during packet scheduling into account. Smart
Scheduler algorithms, benefits, the effect on the network architecture and
further evolution are discussed in this white paper. If not otherwise explicitly
stated, all statements are valid for both LTE (in FDD mode) as well as for
TD-LTE.
Frequency f1
Cell A
Data
rate
Frequency f1
UE
Cell B
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QoS
QoS
Gateway
Coordination over X2+
Channel quality
information (CQI)
Cell A
UE
Cell B
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QoS Class Identifier (QCI) values gives even more flexibility. The minimum
guaranteed cell edge data rate can also be obtained by a Nominal Bit Rate (NBR)
which works even without QoS classes with guaranteed bit rates. Cell edge
prioritization has only a minor effect on the cell aggregate throughput capacity.
Typically, cell edge throughput improvement of 30% can be obtained at the
cost of 5% cell throughput capacity. The capacity measured in the number of
satisfied subscribers is higher.
Uplink power control with interference awareness takes into account adjacent
cells when allocating the uplink transmission power. The feature minimizes
inter-cell interference and helps to boost uplink data rates.
Intra-frequency load balancing helps when the load in the adjacent cells
is not balanced. The idea is to modify handover parameters based on the
information exchange of the X2 interface. If there are double the number of
users in the adjacent cell, the intra-frequency load balancing can improve the
cell edge data rate by 30%.
Multi-cell scheduling can reduce the power levels (muting or related variants)
in adjacent cells to minimize interference, allocating different times and
frequencies among the cells. It selects users and power levels in multiple
cells to combine the benefits of frequency-selective scheduling and spectral
efficiency gain due to reduced interference. The coordination happens between
the sectors of one base station, or over the X2 interface between the base
stations. Multi-cell scheduling can improve cell edge performance by 20%.
TD-LTE base stations need to be synchronized while the synchronization of
LTE FDD base stations is not mandatory and is typically not used by operators
for FDD deployments. Note also that in a synchronized network the reference
signals overlap in adjacent cells. Therefore, terminals should preferably support
cancellation of common reference signals for better performance.
Figures 3 and 4 show the Smart Scheduler use cases, features and gains. Figure4
shows the gains of the individual scheduling functionalities when used jointly.
More gain can be obtained in HetNet scenarios with eICIC.
Use case
Feature
Multi-cell scheduling
HetNet
eICIC
Lower
gain
Highest
gain
Baseline scheduler
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120%
Multi-cell scheduling
Intra-frequency load balancing
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Cell edge
Average
Figure 4. Smart Scheduler downlink data rate gains with non-ideal backhaul
Frequency Selective Scheduling (FSS) is the most important part of Smart
Scheduler. The multipath propagation in the mobile environment makes the
fading frequency selective. The typical coherence bandwidth of the macro cell
channel is 1-2 MHz, meaning there are both faded and non-faded frequencies
in a single LTE carrier. LTE radio uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access (OFDMA) in the downlink and Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access (SC-FDMA) in the uplink. Therefore, FSS allows use of those parts of
the carrier (called Physical Resource Blocks) not faded for the transmission.
The concept is illustrated in Figure 5. Information about channel fading can be
obtained from terminal CQI reports in the downlink and from SRS in the uplink.
Carrier bandwidth
Resource block
Frequency
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Fractional load
in adjacent cell
UE reports
sub-band CQI
Frequency selective
scheduling
Frequency
CQI 1 (low)
CQI 2 (high)
CQI 3 (high)
CQI 4 (low)
CQI 5 (low)
CQI 6 (high)
CQI 7 (high)
CQI 8 (high)
Interfering cell
No transmission
UE A
Transmission to UE A
Target cell
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3.5
35
3.0
30
2.5
25
2.0
20
Mbps
Mbps
1.5
15
1.0
10
0.5
5
0
0.0
FSS off
FSS on
FSS off
FSS on
No interference shaping
Frequency
Cell 1
Cell 2
Cell 2
Time
= PRB in use
= PRB in use
= PRB in use
= PRB in use
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4.0
3.5
Mbps
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
FSS OFF
FSS ON
FSS + Shaping
Figure 9. Cell edge throughput with Frequency Selecting Scheduling (FSS) and
Interference Shaping
eNB#1
Coordinated
scheduling
(inter-eNB)
Fast local
scheduling
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for the interference control was considered in the studies but 3GPP decided
that no new interfaces will be defined for the new network element.
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
0 ms
5 ms
Cell edge
Only intrasite
0 ms
5 ms
Average
Only intrasite
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Throughput
16000
Loading tests
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
#1
#2
#3
#4
CLPC
settings 1
CLPC
settings 1
OLPC
OLPC
CLPC
settings 1
CLPC
settings 1
CLPC
settings 2
CLPC
settings 2
C-RAN off
C-RAN on
C-RAN off
C-RAN on
C-RAN off
C-RAN on
C-RAN off
C-RAN on
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Pico
Semi-static
felCIC
70%
Fast
felCIC
90%
Baseline
w/o felCIC:
0%
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cell can share the same frequency or the small cell can use a dedicated frequency.
The feature is illustrated in Figure 16.
5.Summary
While LTE has been highly standardized by 3GPP, the network algorithms including
packet scheduling are not standardized. The packet scheduling in LTE has the
freedom to control the allocation of resources in time, frequency and power
domains.
Smart Scheduler can improve cell edge data rates by more than 100% in the
presence of inter-cell interference compared to baseline wideband scheduling,
and improve the cell capacity by more than 20%. The main component of Smart
Scheduler is frequency selective scheduling, which avoids fading and interference in
the frequency domain, combined with Quality of Service differentiation and intrafrequency load balancing. Nokias innovation Interference Shaping increases the
cell edge throughput further by up to 100% when the cell loading is unbalanced.
Additional cell edge gains can be obtained by multi-cell scheduling, a simple
software upgrade to distributed base stations. Scheduling information is shared
between base stations over the X2 interface.
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6.Abbreviations
3GPP
BTS
Base station
CAS
CLPC
CoMP
Coordinated Multipoint
CQI
C-RAN
eCoMP
Enhanced CoMP
eICIC
FDD
FSS
IAS
OFDMA
OLPC
QoS
Quality of Service
RRH
SC-FDMA
SRS
UE
References
3GPP TR 36.874: Coordinated multi-point operation for LTE with non-ideal
backhaul
SK Telecom: SK Telecom and Nokia Networks Announce Worlds First
Commercialization of eICIC
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Nokia is a registered trademark of Nokia Corporation. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks or trade names of their
respective owners.
Nokia
Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy
P.O. Box 1
FI-02022
Finland
Visiting address:
Karaportti 3,
ESPOO,
Finland
Switchboard +358 71 400 4000
Product code C401-011895-WP-201506-1-EN
Nokia Solutions and Networks 2015
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