Improved scheduling techniques for efficient uplink communications with carrier aggregation

Abstract

Transmitted power in Long Term Evolution - Advanced (LTE-A) uplink (UL) is strongly related to the number of physical resource blocks (PRBs) allocated. As the transmitted bandwidth increases power does so. However, this rise in power is also required to increase throughput. It is necessary to create efficient techniques that allows sending more information (bits) with the same power requirements. Against previous LTE releases, LTE-A allows the use of non-contiguous resource allocation in the UL together with the simultaneous transmission along multiple component carriers named, carrier aggregation. These features lead to an increase in spectral efficiency thanks to ling performance gains obtained from frequency diversity. This work studies the effect of scheduling techniques on the throughput performance and power consumption of users. Results show that cell edge performance is very sensitive to the scheduling decisions, therefore, limitations in bandwidth are introduced in order to reduce power consumption and improve throughput. Carrier Aggregation turns out to be more efficient as users can be classified and improve spectral and energy efficiency.