Video streaming performance under proportional fair scheduling

Abstract

In this paper, we study the performance of the proportional fair scheduler, which has been proposed for some of the emerging radio access systems. It maximizes the spectral efficiency of the systems, which is a strong incentive for network providers to use it. Our goal is to investigate how the proportional fair scheduling affects the performance of streaming users. Focus is on the throughput-delay trade-offs associated with proportional fair scheduling in CDMA/HDR systems. Special attention is devoted to defining appropriate performance measures and creating a realistic simulation environment. Our results indicate that the opportunistic scheduling may face difficulties in providing the user-level performance in cases where streaming flows constitute a significant share of the traffic load.