Throughput Guarantees for Opportunistic Scheduling: A Comparative Study

In this paper we analyze achievable throughput guarantees for different opportunistic scheduling algorithms operating in wireless time-division multiplexing networks. We consider a scenario where the average carrier-to-noise ratios of the users' channels are different from user to user. An approximation of the throughput guarantee violation probability for users communicating in time-slotted systems are obtained for any scheduling algorithm with a given mean and variance of the number of bits transmitted in a time-slot, and a given distribution for the number of time-slots allocated to a user within a time window. We investigate the corresponding throughput guarantees for three different scheduling algorithms: (i) Maximum Carrier-to-Noise Ratio Scheduling, (ii) Normalized Carrier-to-Noise Ratio Scheduling, and (iii) Opportunistic Round Robin Scheduling.