1 STUDY OF DOWNLINK SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS FOR REAL-TIME MULTIMEDIA SERVICES IN LTE NETWORKS. By: Maniru Malami Umar 1 , Sadiq Aliyu Ahmad 2 , Asma’u Shehu 3 & Ziya’u Bello 4 Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto 1 , Federal University Dutse, Jigawa State 2 , Sokoto State University, Sokoto 3 & Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto 4 . Abstract Long Term Evolution (LTE) is one of the fastest growing technologies which supports variety of applications like video conferencing, video streaming, VoIP, file transfer, web browsing etc. In order to support multiple applications, Radio Resource Management (RRM) procedure is one of the key design roles for improving the system performance. LTE system effectively utilizes the resources by dynamically scheduling the users in both frequency and time domain. However, scheduling algorithms are not defined in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specifications. Therefore, it becomes one of the special interests for service providers. In this paper, Radio Resources Management in LTE networks was studied and presented. Finally, an analysis of six (6) existing downlink scheduling algorithms that mainly focus on real-time multimedia services was carried out. Keywords: LTE, Downlink Scheduling, Radio Resource Management, Real-Time Multimedia INTRODUCTION The emerging applications with different throughput, delay, Packet Loss Rate (PLR) and bandwidth requirements emphasize the need of a network capable of supporting range of services. To achieve this aim, Long Term Evolution (LTE) was introduced by Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) (3GPP Specification, 2003) . The main objective of the LTE network is to enhance the data rate so as to provide the radio resources for variety of highly demanded services, while taking into consideration a satisfied level of Quality-of-Service (QoS) to all active users. Packet scheduler at radio base station (evolved Node B (eNB) in LTE specification) is responsible of assigning portions of spectrum shared among users. The performance of the network can differ according to the algorithms used by the scheduler. Therefore designing an effective scheduler is an important task in order to differentiate the performance of one network from another. The packet scheduler is aimed at maximizing the spectral efficiency and make the negative impact of channel quality drop into negligible (Sulthana & Nakkeeran, 2014). Different scheduling algorithms has been proposed to support different class of services. Some of these algorithms consider a special kind of traffic and most of them focus on real-time multimedia services.