An Indexing Scheduler for Delay Constrainted Scheduling With Applications to IEEE 802.16

The authors consider the problem of scheduling users on the downlink of a Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) system with constraints on the average packet delays over a fading wireless channel. Their objective is to maximize the sum throughput with constraints on the user delays. Due to the difficulty in computing optimal policy, they propose a suboptimal scheduling algorithm which is based on computing appropriate indices and scheduling the user with the highest index. Their simulations for the IEEE 802.16 system indicate that their algorithm satisfies the delay constraints of the users and is highly throughput efficient.