Buffer-Aware Packet Scheduling in Multi-Flow Carrier Aggregation

Multi-flow carrier aggregation (CA) is a key solution for the growing demand for high data rates in wireless networks. Efficient packet scheduling is important to improve the performance of multi-flow CA. In this paper, buffer-aware packet scheduling in multi-flow CA is investigated. First, an approximation of the average queuing delay in relation to the average buffers' length and the average packet arrivals is presented. Then, a buffer-aware packet scheduling scheme that minimizes the average queuing delay based on the presented approximation is proposed. Next, previously developed queuing analytical models are extended to evaluate the performance of the proposed buffer-aware packet scheduling scheme. Finally, the performance of the proposed buffer-aware packet scheduling scheme is compared with the state-of-the-art packet scheduling in multi-flow CA. It is shown that significant improvement is achieved by the proposed buffer-aware packet scheduling scheme not only in the queuing delay performance but also in the packet loss probability (PLP) performance. All analytical results are validated through computer simulations.