Energy-Efficient Fragmentation-Avoidance Uplink Packet Scheduler for SC-FDMA-Based Systems

Energy Efficiency is one of the main concerns in the design of wireless communication protocols, especially for battery-enabled devices, such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. In this paper, we focus on the impact of transmission fragmentation and resource fragmentation on the energy efficiency of SC-FDMA systems. To deal with these two problems, we introduce the Best Edge Set (BESt) algorithm for adoption in packet schedulers for Single-Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) LTE/LTE-Advanced systems. The BESt algorithm employs a novel Physical Resource Block (PRB) allocation strategy to avoid resource fragmentation as well as a new way to prioritize User Equipment (UE) transmissions to reduce the transmission fragmentation and the energy consumed in transmissions. Simulation results show the advantages of using the BESt algorithm and the strong correlation between transmission fragmentation and energy efficiency.