Coordinated Fair Scheduling in LTE-Advanced Multi-Sector Cells

In this paper, we propose a coordinated fair scheduling (CFS) scheme for LTE-Advanced networks where the cells are equipped with multiple sector antennas. To enhance the network spectral efficiency and throughput, the sectors use the same frequency bands. However, to reduce the co-channel interference, the transmissions from the sectors to the users are coordinated. In other words, multiple sectors are allowed to transmit simultaneously, if the occurred co-channel interference is less than a threshold value. The scheduling scheme takes advantage of the user's diversity in space to transmit to the users with good channel conditions while maintaining fairness among the users using the alpha-fair criterion. Furthermore, a heuristic approach is proposed to reduce the computational complexity of the scheduling scheme. The performance of the proposed CFS scheme and the heuristic approach are evaluated using simulation results. The simulation results show that using coordinated fair scheduling improves system performance and increases cell throughput.