Efficient Low Complexity Packet Scheduling Algorithm for Mixed URLLC and eMBB Traffic in 5G

We address the problem of resource allocation and packet scheduling for a mixture of ultra- reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) traffic in a fifth generation New Radio (5G NR) networks. A novel resource allocation method is presented that is latency, control channel, hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ), and radio channel aware in determining the transmission resources for different users. This is of high importance for the scheduling of URLLC users in order to minimize their latency, avoid unnecessary costly segmentation of URLLC payloads over multiple transmissions, and benefit from radio channel aware multi-user diversity mechanisms. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with an advanced 5G NR compliant system level simulator with a high degree of realism. Simulation results show promising gains of up to 98% latency improvement for URLLC traffic and 12% eMBB end-user throughput enhancement as compared to conventional proportional fair scheduling.