Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495

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Ain Shams Engineering Journal

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Electrical Engineering

A novel scheduling technique for improving cell-edge performance in

4G/5G systems
Wael S. Afifi a,b,⇑, Ali A. El-Moursy c, Mohamed Saad c, Salwa M. Nassar a, Hadia M. El-Hennawy d
a
Computer and Systems Department, Electronics Research Institute, Cairo, Egypt
b
Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Egypt
c
Department of Computer Engineering, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
d
Department of Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In cellular networks, users near the edge of the cell are usually suffering from low signal-to-noise-plus-
Received 18 September 2019 interference-ratio (SINR) levels as a result from being far away from the base-station (BS). Many factors
Revised 3 March 2020 could lead to huge attenuation of the received signal in the cell-edge area such as path-loss and multipath
Accepted 29 July 2020
fading. Increasing the BS transmit power is not always feasible as this could lead to an increased inter-
Available online 6 October 2020
cell-interference (ICI). Hence, the cell-edge problem arises. In this paper, a new scheduling technique
has been developed to increase the probability of assigning the available resource blocks (RBs) to the
Keywords:
cell-edge users so that their achieved throughput would increase. A performance comparison with
Wireless networks
Cellular system
state-of-the-art schedulers indicates that our proposed scheduling mechanism leads to a significant
5G improvement in the average throughput for cell-edge users, with negligible performance degradation
LTE schedulers for cell-center users.
Cell-edge Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/4.0/).

1. Introduction
Since the development of mobile wireless communication sys-
tems in the late 1970s, huge efforts have been devoted to improve
both the capacity of the system, and the quality-of-service (QoS)
experienced by the users. To achieve these goals, many approaches
have been taken such as well-planned networks, massive antenna
configurations and Inter Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC)
methods. In conventional cellular networks, the full area of cover-
age is composed of multiple cells, where each cell is assigned a pre-
determined amount of radio resources and power allocation levels.
Accordingly, the overall limited network resources will be dis-
tributed among the cells based on the capacity of each cell, and
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: waelsafifi17@eri.sci.eg (W.S. Afifi), aelmoursy@sharjah.ac.ae
(A.A. El-Moursy), msaad@sharjah.ac.ae (M. Saad), salwa@eri.sci.eg (S.M. Nassar),
helhennawy@ieee.org (H.M. El-Hennawy).
Peer review under responsibility of Ain Shams University.
Production and hosting by Elsevier
the corresponding service data rates needed to assure a fair perfor-
mance among all users’ requirements. Users located at the edge of
the cell, i.e., far away from the base station (BS), typically experi-
ence a low signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR), which
leads to considerably low achievable data rates. This is known as
the cell-edge problem. Increasing the BS transmit power in an
attempt to improve the cell-edge users’ experience is typically lim-
ited by the resulting amount of inter-cell-interference (ICI)
towards adjacent cells.
Most specifications of wireless communication systems have
been using a frequency reuse of unity due to the shortage of avail-
able frequency resources (see, e.g., [1]). Frequency reuse may lead
to ICI, especially at the cell boundaries, further negatively impact-
ing the throughput of cell-edge users. 5G systems are expected to
be based on an ultra-high densification of base stations to improve
the overall system capacity [2]. This densification, however,
together with frequency reuse and high traffic loads, will further
negatively affect the throughput of cell-edge users. This motivates
us to study methods for improving the cell-edge user throughput
for 4G and 5G systems.
LTE [3] and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) [4,5] are the leading systems
for 4G as stated by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
[6]. Both LTE and LTE-A use orthogonal frequency division multiple
access (OFDMA) in the downlink. OFDMA divides the available

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asej.2020.07.022
2090-4479/Ó 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
W.S. Afifi et al.
transmission bandwidth into multiple sub-carriers, which can
carry independent data flows. A physical resource block (RB) is
defined as 12 subcarriers in the frequency domain (180 kHz) and
seven OFDM symbols in the time domain, which is equivalent to
one time slot (0.5 ms). RBs are periodically allocated by the sched-
uler to the active users in a cell every transmission time interval
(TTI) that is equal to 1 ms.
This paper focuses on improving cell-edge user throughput via
intelligently scheduling RBs among the users of the cell. The rest
of the paper is organized as follows: state-of-the-art techniques
for RB scheduling are reviewed in Section 2. In Section 3, The pro-
posed scheduling technique is explained. In Section 4, Simulation
parameters and setup are demonstrated. Simulation experiments
and performance results are discussed in Section 5. Finally, Sec-
tion 6 concludes the paper.
2. Related work
The related literature can be classified into three categories: (1)
the main scheduling techniques (in LTE and LTE-A), (2) scheduling
schemes tailored towards improving cell-edge user throughput
and (3) work on cell-edge throughput improvement via other
methods (not scheduling). In what follows we review the main
related literature from each category.
The main scheduling techniques for LTE and LTE-A can be sum-
marized as follows (more details can be found in [7,8]).

Largest Weighted Delay First (LWDF) scheduler ensures that
each packet has to be received within a certain deadline to
avoid packet drops. The scheduler collects information about
the creation time of a specific packet, as well as its deadline.
The user with the most stringent requirements in terms of
acceptable loss rate and deadline expiration will be preferred
for allocation. This scheduler does not take the channel quality
variation into consideration.

Blind Equal Throughput (BET) attempts to achieve throughput
fairness among all users. In particular, the scheduler allocates
resources to flows that have been served with lowest average
throughput in the past. Again, this scheduler is unaware of
the channel quality variation.

Maximum Throughput (MT) scheduler assigns RB to the user
that achieves the maximum throughput. This is usually per-
formed by selecting the user with the largest channel quality
indicator (CQI) for each RB assignment. The major disadvantage
is that the scheduler does not consider fairness among users.

Proportional Fair (PF) scheduler strikes a balance between fair-
ness and throughput, by taking both CQI and resource allocation
history. In particular, the user with largest ratio of CQI and aver-
age past throughput is selected for each RB assignment.
Heuristics optimization algorithms, such as [9–11], are rarely
used in LTE resource scheduling [12,13] because of the time com-
plexity needed in such algorithms. RB scheduling and allocation in
LTE is a real-time operation which has to be performed each TTI
(i.e., 1 ms), which is not the case in heuristics optimization algo-
rithms that assume plenty of computation power and time to find
the solution as in offline applications. Works done in [12,13] use
very low number of RBs (i.e., maximum one quarter the number
of the used RBs in our paper) to bypass the delay caused from used
heuristics. Due to its fast response, and consideration of both fair-
ness and throughput, PF becomes the most supported scheduling
technique for LTE system [14]. None of the above-mentioned
schedulers, however, pays explicit attention to cell-edge users.
Scheduling techniques that are particularly devoted to cell-
edge user throughput enhancement do exist. See, e.g., [15–17].
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
The authors of [15] consider allocating RBs to the users based
on weighted signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios for both cell-centric
and cell-edge users, then allocating transmit powers, as two sep-
arate steps. Their approach relies on combinatorial optimization
and graph-theoretic techniques, which add to the complexity of
the system. In contrast, this paper introduces a low-complexity,
probabilistic approach for the dynamic allocation of RBs among
cell-centric and cell-edge users. A detailed description for the pro-
posed approach is illustrated in the next section. Throughout our
experiments, our proposal has proven to achieve larger improve-
ments as compared to [15], as will be illustrated in the results
section.
In [16], a dynamic PF scheduler has been proposed to increase
the performance of the cell-edge scheduler. The authors of [16]
modified in the PF scheduler itself to adapt to the individual user
conditions (e.g., location in the cell or QoS requirement). The pro-
posed modification aims to give a chance to the cell-edge users to
utilize some of the RBs seeking improvement of their ability to get
the service. This is done by varying the exponent of the dominator
of the scheduling equation used in conventional PF (i.e., bparame-
ter) to be not fixed to unity as conventional PF use. The dominator
is representing the past achieved average throughput by the user
prior to the processed RB. The algorithm is adapting bsuch that
the users near cell center will be discredited since their btends to
be larger than 1, while the users in the cell edge will be compen-
sated since their btends to be smaller than 1. The dynamic PF algo-
rithm uses a time counter to record the duration in which a user
stays in the cell-edge area. Hence, if a user stays in the cell-edge
for a relatively long time, the user will be then prohibited from
being favored by additional RBs. We will demonstrate in the results
section that our algorithm will outperform this dynamic PF’s
performance.
Studies on improving cell-edge user throughput using other
methods (than scheduling) do exist. For example, Coordinated
Multi-Point transmission and reception (CoMP) was introduced
in LTE-A [4,5] and refers to a family of functionalities involving
multiple BSs coordinating transmissions to a cell-edge user,
including joint processing and coordinated scheduling. The stud-
ies in [17–20] focus on improving cell-edge throughput via CoMP.
However, CoMP comes at the cost of coordination and communi-
cation across multiple cells. Therefore, this paper focuses on cell-
edge user improvement via low-complexity uncoordinated tech-
niques that can be readily implemented within the cell. Further-
more, cell-edge user throughput can also be improved via power
control. Typically, power control is applied as a separate step
after RB scheduling (see, [15]). Therefore, our introduced schedul-
ing mechanism can further benefit from intelligent power alloca-
tion performed separately. This paper, however, focuses on
scheduling.
Improving cell-edge performance could be implicitly achieved
using techniques enhancing the overall cell throughput. In addition
to the COMP and power control techniques, the smart scheduler
introduced by NOKIA in [17] is capable to improve cell-edge data
rate as well as other users using the following techniques:

Frequency Selective Scheduling (FSS): FSS uses Channel Aware
Scheduling (CAS) and Interference Aware Scheduling (IAS) to
select non-faded RBs to each user. Information about fading
channels can be obtained from CQI reports.

Modifying the parameters of handover between adjacent cells
based on the information exchange of the X2 interface. This
technique is known as ‘‘Intra-frequency load balancing” and
used when the load in two adjacent cells is not balanced.

Interference shaping to avoid ICI.

QoS differentiation by allocating more re-sources for users in
weak channel conditions.
W.S. Afifi et al.
Our proposed scheduler can further benefit from any of the
above techniques used in NOKIA scheduler to add to the overall
scheduling. This paper, however, focuses on scheduling. In light
of the above, the contribution of this paper can be summarized
as follows.

A new scheduling algorithm is proposed to enhance the
throughput achieved by cell-edge users. The proposed algo-
rithm is an extension to the pro-portional fair scheduler. In par-
ticular, it is based on probabilistically replacing a cell-centric
user by a cell-edge user at some RBs, where the allocation prob-
ability changes dynamically across RBs according to the concept
of sampling without replacement to give a chance to the cell-
edge users for scheduling and utilizing some RBs. However, this
probability should decay gracefully to avoid poor system uti-
lization if significant RBs are assigned to poor signal strengths
cell-edge users.

Our proposed scheduler has a low complexity, and is suitable to
be invoked every TTI.
Our proposed scheduler aims to improve the cell-edge through-
put, while maintaining the required throughput for cell-centric
users to continue achieving an acceptable level of performance.
3. Edge User Friendly Scheduler (EUFS)
A new packet scheduling technique is developed to enhance the
performance of cell-edge users, or more generally, users experienc-
ing bad channel conditions. The proposed algorithm is an exten-
sion to the proportional fair scheduler. In particular, it is based
on probabilistically replacing a cell-centric user by a cell-edge user
at some RBs, where the allocation probability changes dynamically
across RBs to give a chance to the cell-edge users for scheduling
and utilizing some RBs. However, this probability should decay
gracefully to avoid poor system utilization if significant RBs are
assigned to cell-edge users experiencing poor signal strengths.
Network operators could offer this feature to the all cell-edge
users, or to a selected subset of cell-edge users according to some
criteria (such as in return for additional fees). Accordingly, at each
TTI, the core network controller classifies a user as featured user
(FU), i.e., a user that can potentially benefit from the proposed
scheduler, by checking two conditions. These conditions can be
summarized as follows.

FU classification criteria:
1. The user has been classified as a cell-edge user: (Obligatory)
Classifying users between cell-centric and cell-edge is very
critical. A user is considered as cell-edge if its instantaneous
throughput is below some threshold. This threshold value is
chosen to be the 5th percentile point of the overall cell
throughput, as stated in [21]. CQI reports are used to mea-
sure the instantaneous throughput of a user. Those users
only will be eligible for requesting improved service.
2. The user is agreeing on paying additional fees for the improved
service: (Optional)
Operators could decide to associate the level of system per-
formance provided to users with pricing, as done in [22,23]
based on the recording of RBs utilization. Nowadays, most
of the operators are using fixed price charging models that
set constant rental fees for users per time or per consumed
bit rate. This works well for systems that include scheduling
techniques implementing blind fairness to users/connections
without any prioritization towards users suffering from
degraded channel conditions (e.g., cell-edge users). Hence,
operators could use different pricing schemes to cope with
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
the proposed scheduling technique, as to strike a balance
between featured users (who gain more privileges in terms
of throughput and extra RBs) and non-featured users (who
sacrifice some resources).
The proposed technique uses two-level scheduling. In the first
level, PF scheduling is applied to identify a PF user to potentially
utilize the RB. Then, a second scheduling level will probabilisti-
cally decide whether to allocate that RB to the chosen PF user,
or to one of the FUs. In contrast to conventional PF scheduling
[24] that selects the candidate user to utilize RB based on the
ratio between the current instantaneous and the accumulated
average throughput by the user, our algorithm involves putting
the selected PF user into a second round of competition for the
RB with all FUs (cell-edge users who probably experience weak
signal strength). The selection between PF and FU is probabilistic,
where the selection probabilities vary dynamically as to strike a
balance between improving cell-edge user throughput and mini-
mizing the reduction in overall system throughput. To describe
the details of our proposed algorithms, we first make the follow-
ing definitions.

The set of FUs in the cell is denoted as {FU1, FU2, . . ., FUN},
where N is the number of FUs in the cell.

The set of available RBs in the cell per TTI is denoted as {RB1,
RB2, . . ., RBM}, where M is the number of RBs in the cell.

The minimum required probability of selecting the PF candidate
for RB1 is denoted as P(PF). This is a design parameter that
should be identified by the network operator. The effect of the
choice of P(PF) on the overall system performance will be
explored later.

The initial number of chances for the PF user at RB1 is denoted
as PF_C.

The initial number of chances for FUi at RB1 is denoted as FU_Ci.

Hence, the total number of chances at RB1 could be denoted as:
X
N
UE C ¼ PF C þ FU C i
n¼1
We assume that each FU has the same number K of initial
chances of being selected for the first RB (i.e., RB1). In other words,
initially,
FU C i ¼ K; for i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; N: ð1Þ
Guidelines for choosing the scaling factor K as to achieve the best
performance is discussed in Section 5.
Therefore, and since the probability of selecting a user is calcu-
lated by dividing the number of chances for that user by the total
number of chances, it is straightforward to see that the initial prob-
ability of selecting the PF candidate for the first RB (i.e., RB1) is
given by PF_C/(PF_C + NK).
Since the minimum required initial probability of selecting a PF
user (for RB1) is P(PF), the following condition on the number of
chances needs to be satisfied:
ðPF CÞ
>¼ PðPFÞ ð2Þ
ðPF C þ NKÞ
The latter implies that PF_C, the initial number of chances for
the PF user at RB1, will be set according to:
ðPðPFÞ  N  KÞ
PF C >¼ ð3Þ
ð1  PðPFÞÞ
For the first RB, a user is selected among the PF and FU candi-
dates depending on their respective selection chances initialized
using (1) and (3), respectively. For every other RB, the selection
W.S. Afifi et al.
chances are updated according to the statistical concept of sam-
pling without replacement (SWR). In particular, the user chosen
in one RB will be either assigned lower chance/ probability, or even
totally removed from competing with others for the next RB, and
so on. Consequently, users not selected in a RB will have higher
chances in the next RBs. If all chances ðPF Cand all FU C i Þreach
zero, the chance values PF Cand all FU C i will be reset according
to (1) and (3), respectively. The process continues until all RBs
are utilized by users.
The overall scheduling algorithm (for each cell, at the beginning
of each TTI) can be summarized as follows.
Algorithm EUFS
1. Among all UEs in the cell, identify the featured set {FU1,
FU2, . . ., FUN} based on the FU classification criteria.
2. Set the initial chances PF Cand FU C i ðfor1 <¼ i <¼ NÞac-
cording to (1) and (3), respectively.
3. For each RB1, RB2, . . ., RBM, do:
a. Invoke the PF scheduler to select a PF user.
b. Create the set U of users containing PF Ccopies of the
PF user, and FU C i copies of FU i ðfor1 <¼ i <¼ NÞ.
c. Select one user from U according to a uniform distribu-
tion, to utilize the RB.
d. Update the selection chances as follows:

If the selected user is a PF user, then PF C :¼ PF C  1;

If the selected user is FU i ðforany1 <¼ i <¼ NÞ, then
FU C i :¼ FU C i  1.
e. If all chances ðforPFandallFUsÞreach zero, reset PF Cand
FU C i ðfor1 <¼ i <¼ NÞaccording to (1) and (3),
respectively.
This algorithm ensures allowing the users who previously suf-
fered from lower instantaneous throughputs (namely cell-edge
users) to utilize additional RBs to improve their throughputs and
avoid throttling them. The stolen RBs from PF users are substituted
gradually from other users in the same cell who already have bet-
ter throughput in a dynamic manner that would not affect their
assigned bandwidth seriously as well. This purpose has been main-
tained and proven as will be shown in the results and analysis
section.
4. Experimental setup
The proposed algorithm has been deployed into the Vienna LTE
system-level simulator [25,24], which runs on top of MATLAB. The
simulation parameters used in our experiments are shown in
Table 1. The used system bandwidth and carrier frequency is sup-
ported in LTE Release-8 [26]. The remaining parameters have been
selected to be compatible with the system bandwidth used and to
be applicable in the realistic world as well. Without loss of gener-
ality, we assume that all cell-edge users are considered as FUs. If
some of the cell-edge users refuse the condition of the additional
pricing to be granted the improved performance, this would imply
that the number of featured users will be decreased. Hence, the
average throughput for the other users in both categories (cell-
centric and cell-edge) will be even better than the results provided
in next section.
For performance evaluation, three state-of-the-art algorithms
are used as benchmarks to be compared against our proposal.
The first algorithm is the conventional PF algorithm which is
adopted by the standard LTE system [14]. The other two algorithms
are the weighted SNR algorithm [15] and the dynamic PF algorithm
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
Table 1
Simulation parameters.
Parameter Value
System Bandwidth 20 MHz
Carrier Frequency 2.14 GHz
Channel Model Fast Fading
Total No. of RBs per TTI 100
Antenna per RRH 3
eNodeB Transmit Power 40 W
No. of eNodeBs 7
Total No. of active UEs 210 to 1260
User Mobility No Mobility
No. of Cells 21
No. of TTIs 100
[16] which have been discussed in the ‘‘related work” section.
Throughout our experiments, the proposed algorithm (i.e., ‘‘EUFS”)
is deeply investigated and compared to the best recently proposed
algorithms. It is easily seen that algorithm EUFS is based on
dynamically changing the chances (probabilities) of selecting PF
and FU candidates, respectively, across the different consecutive
RBs. The first experiment investigates the optimal value of the scal-
ing factor K that achieves the best performance using EUFS algo-
rithm. The purpose of the second experiment is to assess the
proposed algorithm EUFS against the state-of-the-art techniques
from [15,16]. The throughput achieved by cell-edge and cell-
centric users is used as the comparison metric. The third experi-
ment also assesses the performance the proposed algorithm EUFS
against the state-of-the-art techniques from [15,16]. The perfor-
mance metric used, however, is the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR).
In the fourth experiment, we use Jain’s fairness index [27] to assess
the fairness of the system across all scheduling algorithms. The
concept of Jain’s fairness index is close to the variance measure
in statistical analysis, as it measures the deviation of the achieved
throughput by each user from the fair throughput. Jain’s fairness
index is maximum (i.e., unity) when all users achieve the same
throughput. The closer the users’ throughputs are to each other,
the larger Jain’s fairness index could be attained by the system.
In the fifth (last) experiment, the execution time is compared
across all scheduling algorithms to investigate the speed of each,
and make sure that the proposed algorithm could fit in LTE online
RB scheduling and allocation.
5. Results and analysis
5.1. Assessing the initial scaling factor
The first study is performed on the choice of the best value for
the initial number of chances (K) as used the EUFS algorithm. Our
empirical approach is based on experimenting with a wide range of
values for K, then choose the best performing value for the remain-
ing experiments of the paper. The selection of K will depend on the
performance of the cell-edge users; the effect of EUFS algorithm on
cell-centric users, however, is discussed in details in the following
experiments. Fig. 1 shows the average throughput of cell-edge
users using EUFS relative to their average throughputs obtained
from a static probability approach, (on the y-axis) using different
values for K (on the x-axis). According to (1), K represents the ini-
tial chances assigned to each cell-edge user per cell (i.e., FU C i ).
However, to keep the initial probability for PF user P(PF) fixed
while changing K, scaling K directly indicates a corresponding scal-
ing for the PF user (i.e., PF_C) accordingly. At the first RB0, P(PF) is
the only effective factor in assigning RB0 to either Cell-edge or cell-
centric user. However, the choice of K would take effect while step-
ping up in the following RBs as the chances adaptation after each
W.S. Afifi et al.
Fig. 1. Average throughput for cell-edge users using EUFS relative to the average throughput for cell-edge users using fixed probabilities, across different K.
RB would be dissimilar. Small K values (i.e., K  number of RBs)
indicate an abrupt change to the total number of chances across
the different RBs. Although this will guarantee the alternation
between cell-edge and cell-centric users from one RB to the next
(the change in chances changes the probability sharply), the algo-
rithm quickly runs out of chances and mandates a reset for the
chances as described in EUFS part ðeÞ since the total number of
chances (i.e. UE_C) is directly proportional to K. Hence, for the total
number of RBs, static probability is effectively performed due to
the very frequent reset to the total number of chances. Still with
K = 1, as shown in Fig. 1, the dynamic probability assignment
through EUFS achieves around 20% performance improvement
over static probabilities. For small K values, the system memory
is shallow, which implies a behavior closer to fixed probabilities.
While increasing the value of K, deeper memory is preserved and
more adaptive RB assignment to the users is performed. Accord-
ingly, a better performance is achieved. On the other hand, the
extreme case of increasing the K value as compared to the number
of RBs (i.e., K  number of RBs) indicates too much initial chances
for any user (edge-user or cell-centric user). This again reduces the
effectiveness of the dynamic probability algorithm (EUFS), since for
each RB only one chance is deducted from the total chances. With a
very high number of total chances, the effect of the dynamic prob-
ability changes across RBs is minor and the algorithm again is get-
ting closer to the static probability assignment. Fig. 1 indicates that
the maximum throughput is achieved at K = 140. Accordingly, we
decide to only consider this value of K for EUFS algorithm in the
following experiments in order not to deviate from the main objec-
tives of these experiments. That is, to compare the proposed algo-
rithm with the state-of-the-art algorithms while keeping the
scaling factor fixed.
5.2. Assessing the throughput
According to 3GPP [6], the user throughput is defined as the
ratio of the number of information bits that the user successfully
receives divided by the total simulation time. If user k has p down-
link packet transmissions during the simulation period ‘‘T(sim)”,
and if there are q(k,i) packets in the ith transmission, and if b(k,i,
j) denotes the number of correctly received bits in the jth packet;
then the average user throughput for user k is:
X
pðkÞ X
qðkÞ
RðKÞ ¼ ð bðk; i:jÞÞ=TðsimÞ
i¼1 j¼1
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
Now, the average throughput of all considered cell-edge users
(featured users) has been observed for different initial probabilities
of the PF candidate user. To this end, we keep the total number of
users at 420, and the maximum number of FUs at 21. Fig. 2 shows
the average throughput relative to a pure PF scheduler (on the y-
axis) for different scheduling techniques (on the x-axis) as well
as different initial P(PF) for our proposed EUFS. Probabilities for
PF candidates less than 70% yield a sharp degradation in cell-
centric user throughput since PF users are unlikely to be chosen,
which could not be preferable. Hence, we run the algorithm using
initial PF probabilities larger than 70% only. The average through-
put for the EUFS algorithm decreases in a sub-linear rate by
increasing the probability of PF candidate. This is because the num-
ber of assigned RBs to cell-edge users decreases as the probability
of PF candidates is increased. The highest throughput increase
using our algorithm compared to the pure PF algorithm occurs at
the lowest probabilities assigned to PF candidates. As seen in
Fig. 2, we got an increase of 2x of cell-edge user performance when
the initial probability of PF candidates is 70%. The increase is about
1.5x when increasing the PF probability between 80% and 90%.
Next, we examine the average throughput across all cell-centric
users while decreasing the PF candidates’ probability. As shown in
Fig. 2, the average throughput for cell-centric users relative to a
pure PF scheduler (on the y-axis) is decreasing in a sub-linear man-
ner while the probability assigned to the PF candidate (on the x-
axis) decreases. By decreasing the probability of PF candidates,
more RBs are given to cell-edge users and less are given to cell-
centric users as compared to a pure PF scheduler. The proposed
EUFS algorithm guarantees that the amount of RBs drawn from
conventional PF candidates, as supposed to be carried out in pure
PF scheduler, to be given to cell-edge users do not degrade the
overall performance of the latter that much because the taken
RBs is drawn in a distributive manner to avoid concentrating the
losses in one or few users which could cause degradation to their
accomplished throughputs. It is also shown in Fig. 2 that the largest
decrease to all cell-centric users throughput occurs at the lowest
probability for PF candidates. Regarding the EUFS algorithm, the
maximum decrease in cell-centric user throughput was approxi-
mately 25%, and this occurred when the initial probability of PF
can-didates was set to 82%. This decrease is shrinking to about
10% when increasing the probability of PF can-didates beyond 70%.
By investigating the performance of both cell-edge and cell-
centric users simultaneously while changing the probability of PF
candidates, the best tradeoff is to assign probabilities to PF candi-
W.S. Afifi et al.
Fig. 2. Performance comparison for cell-edge/cell-centric users using different scheduling algorithms and fixed number of users.
dates from 80% to 90%. This increases the average throughput for
cell-edge users to about 150%, while reducing the average through-
put for cell-centric users by only about 10%. Operators could decide
to further improve the cell-edge performance on the cost of addi-
tional degradation for the cell-centric user performance. To achieve
that, operators could use higher probabilities for PF candidates as
demonstrated in the experiments.
Fig. 2 indicates also that our proposed algorithm clearly outper-
forms the weighted SNR algorithm from [15] in all cases of used PF
probabilities. Our algorithm protects the users from being affected
sharply by re-adjusting the probabilities when moving from any RB
to the next as discussed in Section 3. However, in the weighted SNR
algorithm, using fixed weights across the whole TTI does not main-
tain the adaptability needed, causing aggressive distribution for
the RBs among the users. The same behavior is repeated when
observing the average throughput of all cell-centric users as shown
in Fig. 2.
Furthermore, Fig. 2 indicates that our proposed EUFS algorithm
outperforms the dynamic PF algorithm from [16] in all cases of
used PF probabilities. Updating scheduling priorities for users to
be based on user’s averaged SINR - as performed in dynamic PF -
seems to be less efficient than using user instantaneous through-
put - as used in our proposed algorithm.
Finally, the average throughput of all considered cell-edge users
(featured users) has been observed for different number of users
per cell. To this end, we keep the initial probabilities of the PF can-
didate user at 80%. Fig. 3 shows the average throughput for cell-
edge users relative to a pure PF scheduler across the different
scheduling techniques (on the y-axis) versus the total number of
users per cell as well as the number of cell-edge users per cell
(on the x-axis). Our proposed EUFS algorithm outperforms other
scheduling algorithms in all values of number of UEs/cell. When
comparing EUFS to PF algorithm, we could notice that at lower
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Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
number of UEs/cell, the amount of increase in the average through-
put is higher due to the abundance of RBs/users ratio unlike at
higher number of UEs/cell. For instance, at 10 UEs/cell, the average
throughput for cell-edge users using EUFS algorithm is about 150%
compared to PF algorithm. While at 60 UEs/cell, the average
throughput for cell-edge users using EUFS algorithm is about only
125% compared to PF algorithm. As explained before, EUFS algo-
rithm guarantees that more RBs are given to cell-edge users com-
pared to the pure PF scheduler, which add to their achieved
throughput.
Fig. 3 indicates also that our proposed algorithm is better than the
weighted SNR algorithm [15], since EUFS algorithm implies dynamic
probabilities by re-adjusting the probabilities when moving from
any RB to the next as discussed in Section 3. However, in the
weighted SNR algorithm, fixed weights are used across the whole
TTI which does not maintain the adaptability needed, causing
aggressive distribution for the RBs among the users. Furthermore,
Fig. 3 indicates that our proposed EUFS algorithm outperforms the
dynamic PF algorithm from [16] as updating scheduling priorities
for users to be based on user’s averaged SINR - as performed in
dynamic PF - seems to be less efficient than using user instantaneous
throughput - as used in our proposed algorithm.
5.3. Assessing the SNR
In the third experiment, we examine the average SNR for cell-
edge and cell-centric users while varying the total number of users
per cell and keeping the number of total RBs fixed at 100 RBs/cell.
The goal is to test the scalability of our proposal compared to other
algorithms. Figs. 4 and 5 depict the average SNR relative to a pure
PF scheduler operating at 60 users/cell (on the y-axis) versus the
used number of users per cell (on the x-axis) for cell-edge users
and cell-centric users, respectively. The average SNR for cell-edge
W.S. Afifi et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495

Fig. 3. Performance comparison for cell-edge users using different scheduling algorithms and variable number of users.

Fig. 4. Comparing SNR for cell-edge users using different scheduling algorithms.

Fig. 5. Comparing SNR for cell-centric users using different scheduling algorithms.

users in EUFS algorithm is the highest compared to other algo-
rithms as shown in Fig. 4. In other words, EUFS algorithm is the
most beneficial to cell-edge users. This comes at the expense of
the SNR for cell-centric users which is the lowest using EUFS algo-
rithm, as shown in Fig. 5. However, for the EUFS algorithm, cell-
edge users gain 80% increase in the SNR relative to PF at 60 UEs/-
cell, compared to only 45% reduction in the SNR for cell-centric
users relative to PF at 60 UEs/cell.
493
At lower numbers of users (e.g., 10 users/cell), the increase in
the average SNR for cell-edge users using the EUFS algorithm is
noticeable, as the average number of RBs/users is high ( 10 RBs/
user/cell). On the contrary, the percentage of increase in the aver-
age SNR for cell-edge users using the EUFS algorithm shrinks at
higher number of users per cell as the average number of RBs/users
becomes low. By increasing the number of users per cell, the boost
of SNR for cell-edge users increases from 55% to 80%. While the loss
W.S. Afifi et al. Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495

Fig. 6. Fairness Index Comparison.

in SNR for cell-centric users ranges from 45% to 35% compared to ing the PF algorithm as a preliminary step as discussed in Section 3,
PF. Several techniques are available in the literature to enhance it consumes more time than PF algorithm. However, this increase
the achieved SNR more such as COMP [17–20] and heterogeneous do not exceed 7.5% from total PF execution time.
networks [2], which are beyond the scope of this paper.
Fig. 4 indicates also that our proposed algorithm is better than
6. Conclusion
the Dynamic PF algorithm [15] for cell-edge users as the latter
implies a threshold for the maximum time in which the cell-edge
The proposed algorithm has proven to achieve better perfor-
users would be favored within. Hence, using the dynamic PF sched-
mance for cell-edge users compared to PF scheduler used in LTE.
uler, cell-edge users staying relatively long in the cell-edge area are
In addition, it has shown that the side effects on cell-centric users’
assigned lower RBs than when using the EUFS algorithm. The EUFS
performance resulting from decreasing the RBs that they were sup-
algorithm serves cell-edge users as long as they experience poor
posed to take in PF technique are limited. A performance compar-
signal strengths and with no limitation in time, as explained in Sec-
ison with the leading scheduling methodology in LTE has been
tion 3. At the lowest number of UEs/cell used (i.e., 10 UEs/cell), the
quantitatively evaluated for featured and non-featured users. Per-
average RBs per user is 10 RBs/user/cell. Hence, the dynamic PF
formed experiments have been shown that the best trade-off is to
scheduler will compensate the cell-edge users, which have been
assign probabilities to PF candidates from 80% to 90% so as to mul-
punished due to their long stay in the cell-edge area, more effi-
tiply the average throughput for beneficial users approximately
ciently by exploiting the relatively high average RBs per user com-
about 150%. Consequently, this will reduce the average throughput
pared to other cases. As a result, the SNR achieved by the dynamic
for non-beneficial users to only about 10%. Our algorithm could
PF scheduler at 10 UEs/cell is significantly higher and approaching
further take advantage of COMP and joint scheduling techniques
the SNR results of the EUFS algorithm compared to other cases of
to increase the overall system performance among all users.
number of UEs/cell.

Declaration of Competing Interest

5.4. Assessing the fairness

The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-

In the fourth experiment, we use Jain’s fairness index [27] to
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
measure the fairness of the system across all algorithms. Jain’s fair-
to influence the work reported in this paper.
ness index is maximum (i.e., unity) when all users achieve the
same throughput. The closer all user throughputs are to each other,
the larger Jain’s fairness index. Fig. 6 indicates that the EUFS algo- Acknowledgement
rithm outperforms the other algorithms in terms of the fairness
index achieved (i.e., 0.897). According to the definition of Jain’s The authors send their acknowledgement to STDF for their
fairness index provided in Section 4, and the nature of operation financial grant of the Cloud Computing Center of Excellence (num-
for the EUFS algorithm, we could notice that while increasing the ber 5220). This research was supported in part by the Distributed
throughput of cell-edge users and decreasing the throughput of and Networked Systems Research Group Operating Grant number
cell-centric users simultaneously, the two throughputs seem to 150410, University of Sharjah.
be approaching their mean (i.e., the fair throughput). Therefore,
this makes EUFS algorithm maintain a longer term of fairness than References
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Wael S. Afifi got his B.Sc. in 2008 from the Electronics
and Communication Department, Faculty of Engineer-
ing, Mansoura University, Egypt. He received the M.Sc.
in the area of High-performance Computing in 2013
from the Electronics and Communication Department,
Faculty of Engineering, Mansoura University, Egypt. He
has worked after graduation as a research assistant in
the Electronics and Communication Department, Fac-
ulty of Engineering, Mansoura University till 2009. In
2009 till today, he has joined the Electronics Research
Institute, Giza, Egypt. His research interest is in high-
performance computing and cellular communication
networks (e.g., 5G). Wael is a reviewer for many journals and conferences.
495
Ain Shams Engineering Journal 12 (2021) 487–495
Ali A. El-Moursy received the Ph.D. in the area of High-
performance Computer Architecture from University of
Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA, in 2005. Dr. El-Moursy
has worked for Software Solution Group, Intel Corp., CA,
USA till early 2007. In 2007, he has joint Electronics
Research Institute, Giza, Egypt. His research interest is
in high-performance computer architecture, multi-core
multi-threaded mirco-architecture, power-aware
micro-architecture, simulation and modeling of archi-
tecture performance and power, workload profiling and
characterization, cell programming, high performance
computing, parallel computing and Cloud computing.
Dr. El-Moursy has also participated with IBM Cairo Technology Development
Center, Egypt, as a visitor research scientist for the period from Feb. 2007 till Jan.
2010. In Sep. 2010 Dr. El-Moursy has joint ECE Dep. at University of Sharjah,
Sharjah, UAE as an Assistant Prof.. In Jan.2017, Dr. El-Moursy has been promoted to
the Associate Prof. Rank.
Mohamed Saad (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.
D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from
McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, in 2004. He is
currently an Associate Professor at the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of
Sharjah, UAE. His research interests include networking,
communications and optimization, with current activity
focused on the optimal design of wireless and wired
communication networks, and optimal network resource
management. He has also held research positions with
the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, and the Advanced
Optimization Laboratory at the Department of Computing and Software, McMaster
University, Hamilton, Canada. Dr. Saad was the recipient of the best paper award in
the IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Riccione, Italy, June 2010.
He was the recipient of the University of Sharjah ‘‘Annual Incentive Award for
Distinguished Faculty Members”, for excellence in research, April 2010 (university-
wide). He received also two best teaching awards by the IEEE Women in Engineering
Society, University of Sharjah (in 2007 and 2009). He was also the recipient of a 2005–
2006 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) post-
doctoral fellowship. He is a senior member of the IEEE.
Salwa M. Nassar got her PhD in 1984 from Electronics
and Communication Department, Faculty of Engineer-
ing, Cairo University in the field of Parallelism in Pro-
gramming Languages. Her professional experience
started in 1974 by being a research assistant, in the
Computer & System Department, Electronics Research
Institute. Then, she became an instructor and assistant
professor in Computer & System Department, Elec-
tronics Research Institute. She taught in the American
University in Cairo AUC from 1987 to 1997. In 1991, she
became an associate professor in 1991 and a full pro-
fessor in 1996. She was the head of EU information
Point InP. Prof. Nassar is an Ex-ERI president and she is now the PI of the cloud
center of excellence and the head of the HPCloud group at ERI. Prof. Nassar is a
member in the IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, a member of the Information Tech-
nology Academia Collaboration (ITAC) Steering Committee, and a juror in the egypt.
wsis-award, 2006, organised by the MCIT, Egypt 2006. Prof. Nassar had 50 publi-
cations and has experience and research intersets in the following topics: Parallel
processing, Parallel Logic languages, Modeling & Simulation of parallel programs,
Distributed Systems, Computer Networks, Parallel Applications, Parallel Virtual
Machine, Grid Computing, Cluster Computing and Cloud Computing. Prof. Nassar
has led a number of European and USA funded projects.
Hadia M. El-Hennawy received the B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, in
1972 and 1976, respectively, and the Doctorate of
Engineering (Dr.-Ing.) degree from the Technische
Universitat Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, in
1982. Since 1992, she has been a Professor of commu-
nication engineering with the Electronics and Commu-
nications Engineering Department, Ain Shams
University. In 2004, she became a Vice-Dean for grad-
uate study and research. In 2005, she became the Dean
of the Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. Her
research interests include microwave devices and sub-
systems, as well as filters and antennas for modern radar and wireless communi-
cations applications.