Opportunistic Multiuser Scheduling in a Three State Markov-modeled Downlink

We consider the downlink of a cellular system and address the problem of multiuser scheduling with partial channel information. In our setting, the channel of each user is modeled by a three-state Markov chain. The scheduler indirectly estimates the channel via accumulated Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) feedback from the scheduled users and uses this information in future scheduling decisions. Using a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP), we formulate a throughput maximization problem that is an extension of our previous work where the channels were modeled using two states. We recall the greedy policy that was shown to be optimal and easy to implement in the two state case and study the implementation structure of the greedy policy in the considered downlink. We classify the system into two types based on the channel statistics and obtain round robin structures for the greedy policy for each system type. We obtain performance bounds for the downlink system using these structures and study the conditions under which the greedy policy is optimal.