User Throughput Estimation for the PF Scheduling Algorithm under MIMO Channel Environments

In cellular systems, user throughput estimation is needed for cell-site selection, handover design, etc. This letter introduces long-term average user throughput estimation methods for the proportional fair (PF) scheduling algorithm under multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel environments. From the observation that the current data rate divided by the long-term average throughput of each user is roughly around a similar level, we propose estimation methods for both single user MIMO (SU-MIMO) and simple multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) scheduling scenarios. Since our throughput estimation methods do not depend on the statistics of other users' data rates, they can be easily implemented in practical systems regardless of user data rate distribution.