Towards 5G: Context Aware Resource Allocation for Energy Saving

With the objective of providing high quality of service (QoS), 5G system will need to be context-aware that uses context information in a real-time mode depends on network, devices, applications, and the environment of users'. In order to continue enjoying the benefits provided by future technologies such as 5G, we need to find solutions for reducing energy consumption. One promising solution is taking advantage of the context information available in today's networks. In this paper, we take a step towards 5G by utilizing context information in the scheduling process as conventional packet scheduling algorithms are mainly designed for increasing throughput but not for the energy saving. We investigate a Context Aware Scheduling (CAS) algorithm which considers the context information of users along with conventional metrics for scheduling. An information model of context awareness along with a context aware framework for resource management is also presented in this paper. CAS is simulated applying a system level simulator and the results obtained show that considerable amount of energy is saved by utilizing the context information compare to conventional scheduling algorithms.