Resource Allocation for URLLC and eMBB Traffic in Uplink Wireless Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel resource allocation scheme for uplink 5G networks that optimally divides frequency regions and allocates eMBB and URLLC traffic, improving performance over existing heuristics.

Contribution

It proposes a game-theoretic approach for frequency region division and a water-filling algorithm for eMBB packet allocation, addressing key challenges in URLLC and eMBB coexistence.

Findings

The game has specific pure Nash equilibria.

The water-filling algorithm minimizes variance in eMBB packet allocation.

The proposed scheme outperforms four heuristic methods in simulations.

Abstract

In this paper we consider two resource allocation problems of URLLC traffic and eMBB traffic in uplink 5G networks. We propose to divide frequencies into a common region and a grant-based region. Frequencies in the grant-based region can only be used by eMBB traffic, while frequencies in the common region can be used by eMBB traffic as well as URLLC traffic. In the first resource allocation problem we propose a two-player game to address the size of the grant-based region and the size of the common region. We show that this game has specific pure Nash equilibria. In the second resource allocation problem we determine the number of packets that each eMBB user can transmit in a request-grant cycle. We propose a constrained optimization problem to minimize the variance of the number of packets granted to the eMBB users. We show that a water-filling algorithm solves this constrained optimization problem. From simulation, we show that our scheme, consisting of resource allocation according to Nash equilibria of a game, persistent random retransmission of URLLC packets and allocation of eMBB packets by a water-filling algorithm, works better than four other heuristic methods.