Patent ID: 8755273

Claim:
A scheduling method in a multi-user communication system, said method assigning to each packet of a user a transmission resource from a plurality of transmission resources during a transmission time interval in order to transmit said packet over a link, the method comprising: (a) categorizing the packets from different users into urgent packets and non-urgent packets; (b) assigning to urgent packets transmission resources providing a highest link quality; (c) assigning to non-urgent packets the remaining transmission resources by assigning to each non-urgent packet a remaining transmission resource ensuring a highest link quality out of the remaining transmission resources after the urgent packets are already assigned transmission resources; and (d) transmitting each non-urgent packet using the thus assigned transmission resource and with a transmission power lower than that which would be necessary to transmit it with a maximum spectral efficiency, in view of a quality of service required on the link, the method further comprising, for each non-urgent packet, determining the modulation and coding scheme (MCS n,k max ) with said maximum spectral efficiency (λ n,k max )and the emission power (P n,k max ) for obtaining a quality of service (QoS k ) required on the link using the transmission resource (RB n ) assigned to the packet, checking whether this spectral efficiency (λ n,k max ) is higher than that (λ low-power ) of a predetermined robust modulation and coding scheme and, if so, using in step (d) this robust scheme for transmitting said non-urgent packet with an emission power lower than that previously determined.