Packet scheduling in MIMO satellite long term evolution networks Gbolahan Aiyetoro 1, * ,† , Giovanni Giambene 2 and Fambirai Takawira 3 1 Discipline of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa 2 Department of Information Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Siena, Siena, Italy 3 School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa SUMMARY This paper deals with the performance evaluation of different packet scheduling schemes for Long Term Evolution mobile satellite systems based on the adoption of a multi-user MIMO technique. The major breakthrough of MIMO technology in terrestrial networks has motivated the interest here for the adoption of MIMO in mobile satellite systems as well. In particular, a land mobile dual-polarized GEO satellite system has been considered in this work. The aim of this paper is to propose new cross-layer packet scheduling schemes that achieve a good trade-off among throughput, QoS and fairness and to conduct performance comparisons with other scheduling schemes in the literature. This is the reason why this paper also proposes a new performance index that can be used to evaluate the overall performance of each scheduler. The work shows that the new cross-layer scheduler, called channel-based queue sensitive scheduler, attains the best performance in terms of the new comprehensive performance index, thus representing an interesting solution for future mobile satellite systems. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 24 November 2014; Revised 17 July 2015; Accepted 17 September 2015 KEY WORDS: GEO satellite; MIMO; scheduling; LTE; OFDMA 1. INTRODUCTION The rapid growth in mobile users and continuous increment in the demands for different types of tele- communication services like video streaming, video conferencing, Voice over Internet Protocol Web browsing, multimedia messaging, video gaming and file transfer protocol downloads have compelled the need for new technologies able to provide high data rates with differentiated quality of service (QoS) requirements. It is also worth to note that the available spectrum is limited, and this has made high spectral efficiency an important target to be met by future cellular systems. The need to address these important challenges was the basis of the ITU-R WP 8F work to define fourth-generation mobile communication systems (4G), which are also known as International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-Advanced. The set of transmission capacities and QoS requirements have been specified so that any technology that meets up with all these requirements can be included in the IMT-Advanced family [1]. In this paper, we refer to Long Term Evolution (LTE) and to its application in the satellite context (S-LTE). Even if LTE does not fully meet the 4G requirements [2], LTE- Advanced will meet up with all the 4G requirements as set by ITU for IMT-Advanced. It is worth stating that the recommendations for the satellite component of the IMT-Advanced radio interface(s) have been concluded as stated in [3], in which several technologies that will ensure high degree of spectral efficiency and commonalities with the terrestrial counterparts have been included. *Correspondence to: Gbolahan Aiyetoro, Discipline of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of KwaZulu- Natal, Durban, South Africa. † E-mail: g.aiyetoro@ieee.org INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING Int. J. Satell. Commun. Network. 2017; 35:67–88 Published online 11 November 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/sat.1156 Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.