Next generation wireless systems are expected to provide broadband access service and efficient support to multimedia applications. To overcome the limitation due to harsh propagation environments and the scarce spectrum availability, advanced transmission techniques based on multicarrier schemes and adaptive modulation are commonly considered key elements. However, in order to fully exploit these transmission schemes, scheduling mechanisms able to take advantage of the diverse channel conditions experienced by users and guarantee at the same time quality of service, are of paramount importance. In this paper we first propose a scheduling scheme that increases the achievable throughput by combining multiuser diversity with channel prediction. Then we extend the proposed scheme to incorporate quality of service requirements of multimedia services. The proposed solution has been validated within the framework of the 1ST WINNER project by means of system level simulations.

Relaying, or multihop communications, and multi- ple transmit antennas represents two key technologies for the achievement of the spectral efficiency targeted by the Europ ean IST-4-027756 Project WINNER II. In this paper, a method for dynamic resource partitioning in relay enhanced cells (REC) is proposed. This exploits spatial sharing of time-frequency resources by different radio access points, base station or relay nodes, for their connections to the user terminals. The spatial resource sharing is based on a simple dynamic beamforming approach. A quite significant performance gain is shown with respect to a conventional solution featuring fixed intra-RE C sectorization.

In recent years the research effort devoted to multi-hop communications (or relaying) and multi-antenna transmissions has been constantly growing due to the potential increase in the spectral efficiency that these technologies could provide. In particular, these play a key role for the air interface being designed within the European IST-4-027756 Project WINNER II due to the tight efficiency requirements it poses. In this paper a strategy is proposed for the dynamic resource partitioning in relay enhanced cells (REC). It allows the exploitation of spatial resource sharing through a simple approach based on a logic beam concept. Two different resource partitioning algorithms are proposed and assessed, one aiming at maximize the cell throughput while the other also ensuring fairness between the users. A quite significant performance gain is shown with respect to conventional solutions based on fixed sectorization.