Patent ID: 8879386

Claim:
A traffic scheduler for use in a base station of a wireless network, the scheduler comprising: a traffic prioritization module configured to prioritize best effort (BE) traffic flows between plural BE service classes having different service priorities and between user traffic within each BE service class; a call admission module configured to accept and initialize user traffic including both BE traffic and non-BE traffic; a user level selection module; an input configured to receive user input parameters adapted to control at least the user selection module, the call admission module, and the traffic prioritization module; and a memory device configured to at least store the user input parameters, wherein the user level selection module is configured to selectively use the user input parameters to: weight traffic flows between the plural BE service classes, reserve a portion of total available bandwidth in the wireless network for BE service flows, establish minimum rate settings for each service class user, responsive to a network congestion condition, dynamically adjust a set of initial ratios between traffic rates for each BE service class to ensure that users in a highest priority BE service class are maintained at least at an associated minimum reserved traffic rate (MRTR) setting while lower priority service class throughput is reduced accordingly, and responsive to a determination that the network is uncongested, dynamically adjust the set of initial ratios between traffic rates for each BE service class to ensure that users in a highest priority BE service class are maintained at least at an associated maximum sustainable traffic rate (MSTR) setting before associated MSTRs of lower priority service classes are satisfied in priority order.