Content-aware downlink scheduling for LTE wireless systems : a survey and performance comparison of key approaches

We present in this paper a comprehensive review and comparison of recent downlink scheduling approaches for video streaming traffic over the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) based Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless technology. Focusing on content-aware downlink scheduling approaches, we provide an extensive literature review, a taxonomy for content-aware and content-unaware downlink schedulers, and tables that summarize the key approaches and common parameters among the schedulers. In addition, we analyze and compare via simulation the performance of some of the most relevant scheduling rules. Our main goal is to compare and analyze different classes of scheduling strategies in terms of network centric performance metrics as well as user centric metrics. Quality of Service (QoS) evaluation involves the evaluation of network performance parameters, e.g., packet loss rate, average system throughput and end-to-end packet delay. On the other hand, Quality of Experience (QoE) reflects the user’s experience and satisfaction in terms of Mean Opinion Score (MOS). According to simulation results, proxy based QoE aware scheduling strategies perform best in terms of number of satisfied users and should be used in an LTE downlink to offer high quality video streaming services.