TFC Selection for MAC Scheduling in WCDMA

Duan-Shin Lee and Chiung-Sui Liu

Department of Computer Science

National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 30043 lds@cs.nthu.edu.tw and csliu@conpanna.cs.nthu.edu.tw

Abstract Reacting to the evolution of users needs toward multimedia applications, an important feature of the third generation mobile networks is to support efciently multiple applications with different quality of service. In the radio access networks of UMTS, RLC/MAC layers are designed to accommodate simultaneously mixed services through establishing multiple bearers. A major issue is the rate adaption of these bearers. In this paper, we examine the scheduling problem in the WCDMA MAC layer and propose ve scheduling methods. Our simulation result shows that a load measurement based priority method can achieve better fairness and has better execution time performance than the other four methods. Index Terms Transport Format Combination Selection, MAC scheduling, WCDMA

II. T RANSPORT F ORMAT C OMBINATION S ELECTION IN MAC

LAYERS

I. I NTRODUCTION

N Radio Access Networks (RAN), Radio Link Control and Medium Access Control layer have been designed to accommodate simultaneously mixed services including real-time and non real-time trafc. This is achieved through establishing multiple bearers at the same time. Therefore, a major issue is the rate adaptation of these bearers. Moreover, third generation radio interface provides procedures to the rate adaptation in the lower layers. As these procedures may occur in PHY, MAC or RLC layers, we pay attention to MAC layer in the paper. Further, the UMTS standard offers the UE the capability of running multiple applications simultaneously through establishing multiple logical channels. Each logical channel will be given a priority value between 1(high) and 8(low). Logical channels are responsible for transmitting the data trafc from various services to MAC layer and will be multiplexed to transport channels. Then the transport channels will manage to transmit the data trafc to the physical layer. Moreover, the transport channels dene the ways how the data trafc from logical channels is processed and sent to the physical layer. In other words, each transport channel denes specic formats for transmitting the data trafc. And the combinations of the formats of each transport channel are dened by the network. However, we need to decide the format of each transport channel from the combinations provided by the network to transmit data. In this paper, our task is to schedule the provided resource to the logical channels which are established for various applications with different qualities of service. We propose ve scheduling methods which schedule logical channels according their priorities and/or buffer occupancies. We consider the uplink data transmission only. This paper is organized in the following way. In section 2, we review the transport format combination selection in WCDMA MAC layers. From section III to section VI, we present the ve scheduling methods. In sections VII and VIII we present the simulation result and the conclusions of the paper.

This work is supported in part by Acer Mobile Network, Inc, (90A0255SB) and the program for promoting academic excellence of universities (89-E-FA04-1-4).

In UMTS radio networks, an UE has the ability to support multiple applications of different qualities of service running simultaneously in a WCDMA system. In the MAC layer, multiple logical channels can be multiplexed to a single transport channel [2][5]. In 3GPP documents, the transport channel denes the way how trafc from logical channels is processed and sent to physical layer. The basic data unit exchanged between MAC and physical layer is called Transport Block (TB)[4]. It is composed of an RLC PDU and a MAC header. During a period of time called the transmission time interval (TTI), several transport blocks and some other parameters are delivered to the physical layer. The set of specic attributes forms a Transport Format (TF) of the considered transport channel. They constitute of two parts, a dynamic part and a semi-static part. The attributes of the semi-static part are the duration of time interval and coding parameters, such as the size error correcting codes, coding types and coding rates. The dynamic part of Transport Format forms the Transport Format Set (TFS) of the considered transport channel. This allows a transport channel to support different instantaneous bit rates. Each transport format in the TFS will be identied as a Transport Format Indicator (TFI). See Table I for an example. For each transport channel and for each TTI, the MAC layer will choose an appropriate TF. As there may be more than one transport channel, the combination of the selected TFs for all transport channels forms the Transport Format Combination (TFC) which will be identied as a Transport Format Combination Indicator (TFCI). All the TFCs that an UE is permitted to transmit during the transmission time interval are included in a list called the Transport Format Combination Set (TFCS). TFCSs are assigned by the network. See Table II for an example. TFC selection is an important function in MAC layers in WCDMA networks. A MAC layer will choose an appropriate TFC in every TTI considering the status of the logical channels and the provided radio resources of the transport channels. Each logical channel is managed by a separate RLC entity, which is responsible for executing segmentation and concatenation of data packets to adapt to the size of a MAC PDU. Moreover, according to 3GPP documents, RLC layers can work in three modes: unacknowledged mode (UM), acknowledged mode (AM) and transparent mode (TM) [3]. In this paper we only consider the unacknowledged mode only. Hence, the segmentation and concatenation performed in the RLC layer will be based on the result of TFC selection in the MAC layer. In addition, if the offered data from the RLC layer cannot be segmented into multiple MAC PDUs exactly, the last MAC PDU will be padded with redundant bits. However, the WCDMA document does not allow a MAC PDU to contain entirely padded redundant bits. We call this restriction the allredundant-bit-padding problem. This restriction will inuence our solution of the TFCS selection problem. There are two problems that we need to solve in the transport

format combination selection and scheduling problem. The rst problem is that we need to nd a suitable transport format combination in the TFCS. This problem is nontrivial because the TFCS contains only a subset of all the combination of the transport formats of the transport channels and there is no specic rule on which transport format combination is in the TFCS and which is not. Furthermore, one needs to solve the transport format selection problem in one TTI time interval. This imposes a limit on the complexity of the proposed scheduling methods. We call the rst problem the transport format combination selection problem. Recall that there can be multiple logical channels multiplexed into one transport channel. After one selects a particular transport format combination, one needs to assign the transport blocks of the transport channels to their corresponding multiplexed logical channels. This transport block assignment problem is the second problem that we need to solve. We call the second problem the transport block assignment problem. Recall that the WCDMA documents do not allow all-redundant-bit-padding MAC PDUs. This is a restriction in the transport block assignment problem. III. S TRICT P RIORITY M ETHOD In this section, we schedule logical channels according to their priority levels only. In this section, we show how this method can be implemented in an efcient manner. Our objective is to select a TFC from the provided TFCS and assign the transport blocks of transport channels to the corresponding multiplexed logical channels in every TTI so that high priority logical channels have high priority to transmit their data. Since the valid TFCS is a subset of all the combination of the transport formats and the selected TFC must be in the provided TFCS, we solve the strict priority scheduling by disqualication and elimination. Assume that there are transport channels. For transport channel , , let be the set of logical channels served by . Specically, we identify the highest priority logical channel in the set . Let this channel be denoted by and its associated transport channel be denoted . We examine s TFs and identify the TF that allows channel to transmit as much information as possible. If there are more than one such TF, choose one that corrsponds to a smaller data rate. We do so because the TFs that have smaller data rates require less power to transmit. Denote this TF by . We solve the transport block assignment problem for this TF according to the priorities of the logical channels served by channel . Then, in TFCS we eliminate all TFCs except those that contain . Then we . identify the highest priority logical channel in the set We repeat the above procedure for this channel. After we repeat the above procedure for all transport channels, we nish the scheduling problem. Clearly, in the solution of this procedure the amount of information that logical channels can transmit increases with the priority. We refer the readers to [?] for more details. The 3GPP documents specify that all WCDMA equipment manufacturers must implement this scheduling method in their radio access network products. The main concern of this method is that low priority logical channels can get starved if the high priority channels have a lot of data to transmit. In the next four methods, we take buffer occupancy levels into the scheduling consideration. This should help to relieve the starvation problem of low priority logical channels when the trafc load is high.

on buffer accumulation. Then, we apply the strict priority method to schedule the logical channels according to their new adjusted priority levels. To this end, we set a buffer threshold to each logical channel. For each logical channel, we compute the difference between its queue length and its threshold. For any logical channel where the queue length exceeds the threshold, the difference is positive. In this case, the logical channel is considered to be congested and is labelled with a mark H. Otherwise, it is in normal condition and is labelled with a mark L. We arrange the marks of the logical channels in a list in the descending order of their original priorities. See Fig. 1 for an example. We segment the list of logical channels into one or more priority adjustment regions. We identify the positions where the marks of the logical channels change from H to L as the left boundaries of priority adjustment regions. Similarly, the positions where the marks of the logical channels change from H to L as the right boundaries of priority adjustment regions.

Fig. 1. The priority adjustment regions of logical channels.

The partial dynamic priority method and the dynamic priority method swap the positions of the L channels with those of the H channels within priority adjustment regions. After the swapping, the new positions identify the new priorities levels (in descending order). The two methods differ in the way that channels are swapped. In the dynamic priority method, the order of the logical channels within a priority adjustment region is rearranged in descending order according to their difference values between their queue lengths and thresholds. In the partially dynamic priority method, we rst determine the number of L channels and H channels in a priority adjustment region. For a particular adjustment region, let there be H channels and L channels. Then, we swap the positions of L channels with those of equal number of H channels. Specically, we select out of L channels that are the least congested compared to their thresholds. Similarly, we select out of H channels that are the most congested relatively to their thresholds. The partially dynamic priority methods swap the positions of these channels. For more details, we refer to [?].

V. P ROBABILITY P RIORITY M ETHOD In this section we present a scheduling method based on randomization. The main objective of this method is to select a TFC in an uncomplicated way and also make low priority logical channels have some chances to transmit data. First, for each transport channel and its corresponding TFS, we examine all the TFs and delete the TFs that violate the all-redundant-bits-padding constraint. We also delete the transport format combinations that contain the invalid TFs in the TFCS. Then, we associate with each transport channel a probability given by

IV. DYNAMIC P RIORITY METHOD AND PARTIALLY DYNAMIC P RIORITY M ETHOD One method to relieve the starvation problem of low priority logical channels is to dynamically adjust the priority levels based 2

where is the priority of channel . For each transport channel, say channel , we draw a random number whose value is one with probability and is zero with probability . The TFC selection problem will be solved according the realization of this sequence of random numbers for the transport channels. Speci be the set of transport format indicators of transcally, let port channel in the transport format combinations in the TFCS. is a subset of Clearly, . Dene the maximum rate TF for transport channel to be the TFI in

VI. L OAD M EASUREMENT BASED P RIORITY M ETHOD The weight of transport channel is dened to be

(1)

where and are the number of transport blocks and the transport block size of the -th TF. is the MAC header size of logical channel and is the amount data for channel to deliver in the current TTI. Now we do the disqualication process for every transport channel. If the realization of the random variable corresponding to the -th transport channel is 1, we delete all the transport format combinations from the TFCS except for the TFCs for transport channel . If the realization that contain only TFI of the random variable is zero, we skip the disqualication of TFs for this transport channel. After we nish the TF disqualication for all transport channels, if there are multiple TFCs in the TFCS, we choose the TFC that can transmit the most amount of information. That is, we choose the TFC that has the maximum sum of fraction of transport blocks number and the maximal required transport block number over all transport channels. This solves the TFC selection problem. Now we describe how we solve the transport block assignment problem by randomization. We repeat the following iterative procedure for every transport channel. To illustrate, assume that we are assigning the blocks for transport channel . Assume that the transport blocks with TF of channel in the selected TFC has block size . Assume that the MAC header size is . Initially , and let set be the set of logical channels that are multiplexed to transport channel . For iteration , compute probability dened as

where is the set of logical channels that are multiplexed to transport channel and denotes the size of the set. Recall that denotes the priority of channel . We let denote the buffer occupancy of channel at time . After we compute the weights of all transport channels, we examine the transport channels in descending order according to their weights. For transport channel , we keep only the TFCs in TFCS which has the largest ratio in (1). If there are multiple TFCs in the remaining TFCS, we choose the TFC that has the lowest data rate. This solves the TFC selection problem. We then estimate the packet arrival rates to the logical channels. Assume that the system records the buffer occupancy, the selected TFC and the number of transport blocks assigned to each logical TTI time instances. Then we estimate the channel in the last packet arrival rate according to

where denotes the next time frame is

. The predicted buffer occupancy in

(4)

We will use the predicted buffer occupancies in (4) to assign the transport blocks to the logical channels. The goal is to assign more transport blocks to the logical channel that has large predicted buffer occupancy and priority ratio. We do it iteratively. Assume that the TF of transport channel in the selected TFC has transport blocks with block size . Assume that the MAC header size is . Let , where is the set of logical channels that are served by transport channel . In the -th iteration, compute the weight

where

(2)

where is the set of logical channels that are multiplexed to transport channel . Now in the descending order of priority, draw a random number for each logical channel in sequentially. If the random number is 1, try to assign

-th iteration and . We also let denote the number of transport blocks to be assigned in iteration . Clearly, . Select the logical channel in that have the largest weight and assign to it

is the predicted buffer occupancy of channel in the

(3)

blocks. Then the number of transport blocks assigned to channel up to iteration is

blocks to logical channel , where is the number of blocks that have been assigned to logical channel from iteration 0 up to iter . If the sample value ation . In this case, of the random number is zero, assign 1 block to logical channel . In this case, . If equals to , meaning that logical channel has acquired all the needed blocks, . Finally, we increment the iteration then we let index by 1. We stop the iteration when we nish the assignment of all the transport blocks.

where is the number of blocks that have been assigned to channel up to iteration . Since channel receives more transport blocks, its predicted buffer occupancy becomes

The number of blocks to be assigned in iteration is . If equals , logical

has acquired all its needed blocks and we set . Finally, we increment by one. We perform the above procedure for all transport channels. channel

VII. S IMULATION R ESULTS In this section, we will rst introduce the simulation model. Then we will present the simulation result. We use Poisson processes as the trafc model. The priority level of logical channels ranges from 1 (the highest) to 8 (the lowest). Each logical channel may have different maximal buffer size. The threshold in the partially dynamic priority method and the dynamic priority method is selected to be fty ve percent of the maximum buffer size. The load measurement based priority method measures the buffer occupancy based on the measurements in the last ten frames. In order to compare the performance of the proposed ve scheduling methods, we run transient and steady-state simulations. In the transient simulation, we repeat 10000 independent simulations with 1000 TTIs per simulation. In each steady-state simulation, we simulate one million TTIs, where one TTI is 10 ms. In the transient simulation, we show the variation of the buffer occupancy of each logical channel of different priority through time. We also show the variation of the weighted buffer occupancy of logical channels. In the steady-state simulation, we compare the relation of link utilization and weighted buffer occupancy and weighted packet loss ratio caused by buffer overow. The weighted buffer occupancy is dened as BitRate(kbps) TFS

#1 79.8

Transport Channel #2 96

#3 91.5

TABLE I
T HE TFS OF EACH TRANSPORT CHANNEL

(#1,#2,#3)= (TF0,TF0,TF0),(TF0,TF1,TF0),(TF0,TF2,TF0),(TF0,TF0,TF1), (TF0,TF0,TF2), (TF0,TF3,TF0),(TF0,TF0,TF3),(TF1,TF0,TF0), (TF2,TF0,TF0),(TF3,TF0,TF0), (TF0,TF1,TF1),(TF0,TF1,TF2), (TF0,TF2,TF1),(TF0,TF2,TF2),(TF1,TF1,TF0), (TF1,TF2,TF0), (TF2,TF1,TF0),(TF2,TF2,TF0),(TF1,TF0,TF1),(TF1,TF0,TF2), (TF2,TF0,TF1),(TF2,TF0,TF2),(TF1,TF1,TF1),(TF1,TF1,TF2), (TF1,TF2,TF1), (TF1,TF2,TF2),(TF2,TF1,TF1),(TF2,TF1,TF2), (TF2,TF2,TF1),(TF2,TF2,TF2), (TF0,TF1,TF3),(TF0,TF2,TF3), (TF0,TF3,TF1),(TF0,TF3,TF2),(TF1,TF0,TF3), (TF2,TF0,TF3), (TF1,TF3,TF0),(TF2,TF3,TF0),(TF3,TF1,TF0),(TF3,TF2,TF0), (TF3,TF0,TF1),(TF3,TF0,TF2)
TABLE II
T HE TFCS

(5)

is the number of transport channels. The weighted loss where ratio is dened as

(6)

denotes the loss ratio of channel . Finally, the link where utilization is dened as

(7)

according to the selection results in every TTI. We examine the ve scheduling methods by simulating two TFCSs. The rst TFCS is proposed by 3GPP in document [1]. We nd that the performance of the ve scheduling methods are very similar for this TFS and TFCS. This is because the size of the TFCS suggested by 3GPP for conformance testing is too small. We omit the details due to space limit. We refer the readers to [?] for details. We construct a larger and more realistic TFCS to test the ve proposed scheduling methods. The TFS is shown in Table I and the TFCS is shown in Table II. We consider two cases. In the rst case, there are three logical channels and in the second case, there are ve logical channels. In these two cases, the priority levels of the logical channels equal to their indices. Specically, logical channel has priority level . In the rst case, one logical channel is served by exactly one transport channel. In the second case, logical channel 1 and logical channel 5 are served by transport channels 1 and 3, respectively. Logical channels 2, 3 and 4 are multiplexed and served by transport channel 2. The packet arrival rates and the packet lengths are shown in Table III. The weighted buffer occupancy is shown in Fig. 2 and 3. From these gures, we see that the load measurement based priority method has the least weighted buffer occupancy. The weighted packet loss ratio of the two cases is shown in Fig. 4 and Fig. 5. From this gure, we 4

see that the load measurement based priority method has the least weighted loss ratio. Since the load measurement based method estimates arrival rates by measurement, one may concern that as the arrival rate changes abruptly the performance of the method may degrade seriously. We conduct transient simulation on case 2. In the transient simulation, we increase the arrival rate of channel 1 from 154 and 152 to 280 at time 6. The result is shown in Fig. 6. This gure shows that the load measurement based method is quite robust to abrupt load change. Using simulation, we have estimate the execution time of the ve scheduling methods. The result is shown in Table IV. This estimation is based on the second case and the TFCS in table I and II. The simulation program was executed in the WINDOWS 2000 personal computer with a Pentium III 1GHz CPU. According to Table IV, the load measurement based method has very reasonable execution time compared to other methods. case 1 LCH 1 LCH 2 LCH 3 case 2 LCH 1 LCH 2 LCH 3 LCH 4 LCH 5 Packet arrival rate (sec ) 154 170 176 Packet arrival rate (sec ) 152 224 190 171 175 Packet length (bytes) 140 250 190 Packet length (bytes) 140 66 78 74 190 Buffer size (bytes) 5000 5500 6000 Buffer size (bytes) 5000 6000 7500 9000 10000

TABLE III
PACKET ARRIVAL RATES AND PACKET LENGTHS

strict priority partially dynamic dynamic priority probability priority load measurement
TABLE IV

0.1096 ms 0.1413 ms 0.1421 ms 0.0216 ms 0.0347 ms

Weighted Loss Ratio

Compare Weighted Loss Ratio with the 5 schemes 0.6 Strict priority method Load measurement based priority method Probability priority method Partially dynamic priority method Dynamic priority method

0.5

0.4

E STIMATED EXECUTION TIME OF THE FIVE METHODS

0.3

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Compare WeightedBO with the 5 schemes 4000 Strict priority method Load measurement based priority method Probability priority method Partially dynamic priority method Dynamic priority method

0.1

3500

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WeightedBO of LCHs

2500

Fig. 5. The relation of weighted loss ratio and link utilization of Case 2.
Compare WeightedBO of LCHs using 5 schemes 1200 Strict priority method Load measurement based priority method Probability priority method Partially dynamic priority method Dynamic priority method

2000

1500

1100 1000 1000 500 WeightedBO of LCHs 900

0 0.3

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0.6 0.7 Link Utilization

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Fig. 2. The relation of weighted buffer occupancy and link utilization of Case 1.
Compare weightedBO with the 5 schemes 8000 Strict priority method Load measurement based priority method Probability priority method Partially dynamic priority method Dynamic priority method

700

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7000

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4 5 6 SimulationTime(sec)

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Fig. 6. The transient weighted buffer occupancy of Case 2.

4000

VIII. C ONCLUSIONS
3000 2000

1000

0 0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6 0.7 Link Utilization

0.8

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Fig. 3. The relation of weighted buffer occupancy and link utilization of Case 2.
Compare Weighted Loss Ratio with the 5 schemes 0.35 Strict priority method Load measurement based priority method Probability priority method Partially dynamic priority method Dynamic priority method

In this paper, we have studied ve scheduling methods for TFC selection to select an appropriate TFC and distribute transport blocks to logical channels. From the simulation results, we nd that the load measurement based priority method has efcient performance and maintains better fairness among logical channels than the other four methods. The load measurement method has excellent execution time performance as well. R EFERENCES Conformance testing v3.4.0. 3gpp, June 2001. TS 34.108. Mac protocol specication v.3.8.0. 3gpp, June 2001. TS 25.321. Rlc protocol specication v.3.10.0. 3gpp, June 2001. TS 25.322. Services provided by the physical layer v.3.9.0. 3gpp, June 2001. TS 25.302. Harri Holma and Antti Toskala, editors. WCDMA in UMTS-Radio Access for Third Generation Mobile Communications. Wiley, New York, 2000.

0.3

0.25 Weighted Loss Ratio

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

0.2

0.15

0.1

0.05

0 0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6 0.7 Link Utilization

0.8

0.9

Fig. 4. The relation of weighted loss ratio and link utilization of Case 1.