QoS-Aware and Fair Resource Allocation with Carrier Aggregation
in LTE-A Networks
Peisheng Yan
∗§
, Xin Chen
∗
, Zhuo Li
∗†
, Yudong Jia
‡
∗
School of Computer Science, Beijing Information Science & Technology University, Beijing 100101, P.R.China
†
Beijing Key Laboratory of Internet Culture and Digital Dissemination Research,
Beijing Information Science & Technology University, Beijing 100101, P.R.China
‡
Cloud Technical Architecture Department, Dawing Cloud Computing Technologies Limited Company, Beijing 100193, P.R.China
§
Corresponding Author. E-mail: yanpeisheng@mail.bistu.edu.cn
Abstract—With the rapid growth of bandwidth-intensive
applications, Carrier Aggregation (CA) has been introduced in
Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) Networks to provide
higher data rates. In this paper, we investigate the joint
resource block allocation and link adaptation problem with
CA in LTE-A dwonlink. The problem is formulated as an
Integer Programming problem aimed at maximizing the cell
throughtput while guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS) of
each User Equipment (UE), in the form of the minimum
transmission rate. We also consider the proportional fairness
of radio allocation among UEs. Due to the NP-hardness of
the problem, we propose an efficient algorithm QA-PFRA.
QA-PFRA consists of two phases. In the first one we assign
radio resource to UEs successively for QoS requirements
according to UEs’ priority, and in the second one we assign
CCs to other UEs to maximize the cell weighted throughput.
We develop a simulator to evaluate the performance of QA-
PFRA. For comparison, we also implement GA algorithm and
ERAA algorithm. It is found that the cell throughput obtained
by QA-PFRA is about 70% higher than that obtained by
ERAA, and QA-PFRA can also achieve higher throughput
compared with GA when the UEs are sparsely distributed in
the cell. Furthermore, we can observe that Jain’s fairness index
obtained by QA-PFRA is about 10% higher than that obtained
by GA and 40% higher than that obtained by ERAA.
Keywords-LTE-A Networks; Resource Allocation; Carrier
Aggregation; Quality of Service; Proportional Fairness;
I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, the mobile data traffic of wireless services
with wide bandwidth especially bandwidth-intensive appli-
cations like videos grows rapidly. According to Ericsson
mobility report, the mobile data traffic will achieve 52 EB
per month and the mobile video traffic will account for
around 70% in 2021 [1]. In order to achieve wider band-
width and higher data rate, Long Term Evolution-Advanced
(LTE-A) proposed by 3rd Generation Partnership Project, in
Release 10, introduces Carrier Aggregation (CA) technique
to aggregate two or more Componet Carriers (CCs) [2].
Allowing multiple CCs to be exploited simultaneously as if
it is one wide carrier used for transmission, LTE-A UE can
support a total bandwidth up to 100 MHz to meet Interna-
tional Mobile Telecommunications-Advanced reqiurement,
i.e., a downlink peak data rate of 1 Gbps and an uplink
peak data rate of 500 Mbps. Meanwhile, Modulation and
Coding Scheme (MCS) is a key physical layer technique
to enhance system throughput and reliability. A MCS with
high coding rate can provide high transmission rate in the
good-quality channel, while a MCS with low coding rate is
selected to guarantee the reliability of data transmission in
the poor-quality channels [3]. Therefore, it is necessary for
Radio Resource Management (RRM) in LTE-A to handle
CC selection, Resouce Block (RB) allocation and MCS
selection simutaneously.
For resource allocation problem in LTE-A DownLink
(DL), researchers focused on the demands for bandwidth-
intensive mobile multimedia applications such as VOIP,
online games and video services. They proposed efficient
resource allocation algorithms satisfying different Quality of
Service (QoS) requirements [4], [5], [6]. Chen et al. proposed
an intelligent optimization learning algorithm called ACO-
HM based on ant colony learning method to minimize the
number of allocated RBs [4], and Zhang et al. proposed a
novel CQI feedback method and optimized the RB assign-
ment and power allocation to improve system throughput [5].
Although MCS selection and QoS requirement are consid-
ered, the two aforementioned algorithms can not support CA
technique. Miao et al. proposed a novel QoS-aware resource
allocation with CA to achieve an improvement in real-time
services [6]. However, the algorithm handled CC assignment
and packet scheduling as two separate problems without link
adaptation. Considering MCS selection jointly with CC as-
signment and RB allocation, Liao et al. proposed an efficient
algorithm for LTE-A referred to greedy algorithm (GA) to
maximize cell throughput [7]. Further, Rostami et al. relaxed
the constraint that all User Equipments (UEs) have the
same CA capability, and proposed the ERAA algorithm for
maximizing single cell throughput and ensuring proportional
fairness among all UEs [8]. However, GA and ERAA can not
support bandwidth-intensive mobile multimedia applications
well without considering QoS.
Motivated by the previous studies, we formulate a joint
2016 12th International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks
978-1-5090-5696-5/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/MSN.2016.23
97
2016 12th International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks
978-1-5090-5696-5/16 $31.00 © 2016 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/MSN.2016.23
97