CENTRAL SCHEDULER FOR SCHEDULING COMMUNICATION OF A PLURALITY OF COMMUNICATION DEVICES OVER A BANDWIDTH-LIMITED RADIO CHANNEL

摘要

The disclosure relates to a central scheduler (161) for scheduling communication of a plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d), in particular Narrowband Internet-of-Things (NB-IoT) communication devices over a bandwidth-limited radio channel, in particular an NB-IoT radio channel, the central scheduler (161) comprising: a memory (166) configured to store for each communication device of the plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d) information about communication scheduling requirements for the respective communication device (110a), the information comprising at least one transmission time interval in which the respective communication device (110a) is able to schedule data transmission (133); a processor (164) configured to determine a central communication schedule (162, 163) based on a metric with respect to the communication scheduling requirements for at least a portion (110a, 110c) of the plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d), wherein the metric is based on a sharing scheme for sharing the bandwidth-limited radio channel between the at least portion (110a, 110c) of the plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d), wherein the central communication schedule (162, 163) indicates for each communication device of the at least portion (110a, 110c) of the plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d) a transmission time interval in which the respective communication device (110a) is allowed for data transmission (133); and a transmitter (165) configured to transmit the central communication schedule (162, 163) to the at least portion (110a, 110c) of the plurality of communication devices (110a, 110b, 110c, 110d) for instructing the communication devices to schedule data transmission (133, 134, 135, 136) according to the central communication schedule (162, 163).