Dynamic Multiconnectivity Based Joint Scheduling of eMBB and uRLLC in 5G Networks

Multiple use cases are the dominant feature for the fifth-generation mobile communication system (5G). Enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultrareliability low latency communication (uRLLC) are considered as two main scenarios. Different from the eMBB, which requires high data rate, the uRLLC requires extremely high reliability and very low latency. With multiple demands, the coexistence of eMBB and uRLLC will be an urgent challenge for the 5G networking strategy. In this article, a dynamic multiconnectivity (MC)-based joint scheduling framework with traffic steering for eMBB and uRLLC is proposed. The eMBB and uRLLC are specifically sliced with each other, which avoids the queue of uRLLC. A modified effective capacity (EC) model is proposed to measure the performance of our framework, which improves the throughput of eMBB under the guarantee of uRLLC latency. The proposed EC model turns the analytical target to the queue of users, different from the queue of base stations in traditional EC model. By a two-step optimization, the typical mixed integer nonlinear programming conducted by the EC model is decomposed into the integral programming and the nonlinear programming. The system-level simulation results show the proposed framework enhances the system throughput effectively while guaranteeing the uRLLC latency.