IEEE 802.16e/m energy‐efficient sleep‐mode operation with delay limitation in multibroadcast services

Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access networks usually provide flexible sleep‐mode operations that allow mobile stations to conserve energy during sleep or active mode. For example, the IEEE 802.16e/m standard presents three power‐saving classes that can be associated with different types of network connections to decrease the power consumption of mobile stations. However, previous studies failed to fully use the sleep‐mode features to save energy of a mobile station while simultaneously maintaining unicast and multicast/broadcast connections. This study proposes an energy‐efficient packet scheduling algorithm for both multicast and broadcast services that does not violate the QoS requirements of real‐time connections. The proposed activity aggregation selection mechanism approach can minimize total power consumption of mobile stations in one cell and simultaneously satisfy the QoS of real‐time connections. This method improves energy efficiency for IEEE 802.16e/m and the activity aggregation selection mechanism approach can optimize sleeping mode features to save the energy of mobile stations with overlapping connection packets The simulations in this study verified the proposed approach.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy Efficient Schedulers in Wireless Networks: Design and Optimization

Minimizing energy consumption is crucial for portable wireless stations because they operate on a limited battery supply. For example, the IEEE 802.11 standard includes a mechanism called power-saving mode (PSM), which allows a network interface on a mobile station to enter a sleep state whenever possible to reduce its energy consumption. We consider a generic wireless system composed of an access point (AP) and several stations that offer a PSM to its users. Our PSM is AP-centric (i.e., gives control to the AP) to save more energy. We formulate a downlink scheduling optimization problem aimed at saving energy and propose two heuristic scheduling policies to solve it. One of these policies is non-work-conserving, and it offers an interesting tradeoff between energy consumption and user performance. We also study and show how the length of the Beacon Period (BP) has a significant impact on the energy and the delay performance of wireless stations. For each of our two scheduling policies, we derive simple approximate formulas for the length of the BP that minimizes the energy consumption and for the relationship between the delay performance and the length of the BP. Assuming the maximum allowable average packet delay is given by the users as a QoS requirement, we illustrate how to dimension the length of the BP for the two schedulers we have proposed and show that we can achieve significant energy savings while meeting the delay constraint with the non-work conserving one in many cases. Extensive simulations show that a fine-tuning of the length of the BP as well as well-designed scheduling disciplines is essential to saving energy in wireless stations.     

Performance analysis of Push-To-Talk over IEEE 802.16e with? sleep mode and idle mode

We investigate how much power saving can be achieved for a Push-To-Talk (PTT) service by employing sleep mode and idle mode in the IEEE 802.16e. In this paper, a mobile station by employing sleep mode during an on-session and idle mode during an off-session of the PTT service is modeled as a semi-Markov chain. We obtain power consumption of the mobile station, call setup delay and talker arbitration delay. Using our mathematical model, we can find the optimal sleep window satisfying the required quality of service (QoS) on call setup delay and talker arbitration delay. The numerical examples show that the sleep mode and idle mode provide a considerable reduction on energy of the mobile stations.     

Hopfield neural‐network‐based dynamic resource allocation scheme for non‐real‐time traffic in wireless networks

Dynamic resource allocation (DRA) plays a fundamental role in current and future wireless networks, including 3G systems. In this paper, a scheduling DRA scheme for non‐real‐time (NRT) packet services in wireless system is proposed based on the use of Hopfield neural networks (HNN). The scheme exploits the fast response time of HNN for solving NP optimization problems and has been particularized for the downlink transmission in a UMTS system, although it could be easily extended to any other radio access technology. The new DRA scheme follows a delay‐centric approach, since it maximizes the overall system resource utilization while minimizing the packet delay. Simulation results confirm that the proposed HNN‐based DRA scheme is effective in supporting different types of NRT services, while achieving efficient utilization of radio resources. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive packet scheduling for the uplink traffic in IEEE 802.16e networks

IEEE 802.16e is a telecommunication standard technology designed to support a wide variety of multimedia applications. It defines five service classes, each one with its respective QoS requirements, but does not define the scheduling algorithm for these service classes. In this paper, an adaptive packet scheduling algorithm for the uplink traffic in IEEE 802.16e networks is proposed. This algorithm is designed to be completely dynamic, mainly in networks that use various modulation and coding schemes (MCSs). The algorithm is applied directly to the bandwidth request queues in the base station (BS) and aims at supporting the real‐time and non‐real‐time applications. Using a cross‐layer approach and the states of the bandwidth request queues in the BS, a new deadlines based scheme was defined, aiming at limiting the maximum delay to the real‐time applications. Moreover, this algorithm interacts with the polling management mechanisms of the BS and controls the periodicity of sending unicast polling to the real‐time and non‐real‐time service connections, in accordance with the QoS requirements of the applications. The proposed algorithm was evaluated by means of modeling and simulation in environments where various MCSs were used and also in environments where only one type of modulation was used. The simulations showed satisfactory results in both environments. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using GI‐G‐1 queuing model for rtPS performance evaluation in 802.16 networks

Among the scheduling services, rtPS (real‐time polling service) is designated for real‐time applications. Among three packet delay intervals, performance effect on polling interval has been widely studied, but less on the intervals of scheduling and delivery. To evaluate the performance of delay‐sensitive rtPS applications, instead of using continuous queueing model, a discrete‐time GI‐G‐1 model, which considers intervals of polling, scheduling, and delivery, is proposed. By taking VoIP as a typical rtPS application, the transmission latency under different QoS settings, polling probability, and traffic load are presented. The latency is also compared among various codec schemes. The results indicate that when the codec rate is either fulfilled or dissatisfied by the promised bandwidth of service levels, the performance is highly dependent upon the polling probability, no matter what the traffic condition is. However, if the codec rate is in between the promised bandwidth of various service levels, the polling probability is a dominant factor in light traffic environment, while the settings on QoS parameters will strongly determine the performance in heavy traffic situation. In addition to the verification using simulation, the bandwidth utilization derived from the GI‐G‐1 model can be applied to improve the serving capacity of base stations. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy efficient scheduling for downlink elastic traffic in wireless networks

In wireless networks, maximizing throughput and minimizing energy consumption are two conflicting objectives. For elastic traffic, it is the total completion time, not the delay constraint of a single packet or the short‐term throughput requirement, that directly affects the quality‐of‐service (QoS). At the same time, the energy consumption should be minimized in order to prolong the battery lifetime of the mobile station (MS). In this paper, we propose energy efficient schedulers that consider throughput and energy saving simultaneously. Through extensive simulations, we compare the proposed schemes with the conventional scheme where a mobile terminal stays awake until all the pending packets are completely serviced. The simulation results show that our schemes outperform the conventional one in terms of utility, i.e., user satisfaction, which is defined as inversely proportional to the multiplication of weighted service completion time and energy consumption. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Routing protocol development for quality of service optimization of video‐on‐demand system over mobile ad hoc networks

A video‐on‐demand (VoD) application system over mobile ad hoc networks typically requires particular quality of service (QoS) parameters to be achieved. In this paper, we have proposed a novel QoS‐based routing protocol called as mobile VoD protocol. This protocol has been developed for improving the QoS of the mobile VoD system (normal Mobi_VoD approach). The protocol uses customer caching scheme for storing the first fragment of the entire video in the mobile customers and thereafter broadcast them when the new mobile customers missed the portion of the already transmitted first fragment for reducing the service delay of the customer, consequently optimizing QoS parameters. Various scenarios have been studied, and the efficacy of simulation results proves that the proposed system architecture in which the mobile customers use an ad hoc network caching scheme (mobile VoD protocol) is more efficient and performs better than the existing system (ad hoc on‐demand distance vector protocol) when compared in terms of QoS parameters such as the end‐to‐end delay, energy consumption, packet delivery ratio, throughput, and overhead.     

QoS provisioning for multiple non‐real‐time services in cellular wireless networks

Future mobile services are expected to include various non‐voice oriented services. One important category of non‐voice oriented mobile services is non‐real‐time services. When a mobile user establishes a connection to access non‐real‐time service, the mobile user usually cares about whether the total time to complete its data transfer is within its time tolerance. In addition, different mobile users may have different bandwidth requirements and different tolerances in the total completion time. It is essential for wireless systems to provide various mobile users with different total completion times. In this paper, two quality‐of‐service (QoS) metrics, called stretch ratio and eligibility percentage, are employed at a connection level to present the degree of the length of the total completion time. We devise a measurement based call admission control scheme that provides multiple QoSs for various mobile users which have different requirements of stretch ratios, eligibility percentages, and bandwidths. Extensive simulation results show that the measurement based call admission control scheme not only provides various satisfactory QoSs for mobile users but also produces high throughput. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing QoS requirements for video streaming: from intra‐node to inter‐node

Streaming video over IP networks has become increasingly popular; however, compared to traditional data traffic, video streaming places different demands on quality of service (QoS) in a network, particularly in terms of delay, delay variation, and data loss. In response to the QoS demands of video applications, network techniques have been proposed to provide QoS within a network. Unfortunately, while efficient from a network perspective, most existing solutions have not provided end‐to‐end QoS that is satisfactory to users. In this paper, packet scheduling and end‐to‐end QoS distribution schemes are proposed to address this issue. The design and implementation of the two schemes are based on the active networking paradigm. In active networks, routers can perform user‐driven computation when forwarding packets, rather than just simple storing and forwarding packets, as in traditional networks. Both schemes thus take advantage of the capability of active networks enabling routers to adapt to the content of transmitted data and the QoS requirements of video users. In other words, packet scheduling at routers considers the correlation between video characteristics, available local resources and the resulting visual quality. The proposed QoS distribution scheme performs inter‐node adaptation, dynamically adjusting local loss constraints in response to network conditions in order to satisfy the end‐to‐end loss requirements. An active network‐based simulation shows that using QoS distribution and packet scheduling together increases the probability of meeting end‐to‐end QoS requirements of networked video. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy‐delay‐aware caching strategy in green CCN using markov approximation

One of the basic challenges in content‐centric networking (CCN) is how to optimize the overall energy consumption of content transmission and caching. Furthermore, designing an appropriate caching policy that considers both energy consumption and quality of service (QoS) is a major goal in green CCN. In this paper, the problem of minimizing the total CCN energy consumption while being aware of the end‐to‐end delay is formulated as an integer linear programming model. Since it is an Non‐deterministic Polynomial‐time (NP)‐hard problem, the Markov approximation method for an energy‐delay aware caching strategy (MAEDC) is proposed through a log‐sum‐exp function to find a near‐optimal solution in a distributed manner. The numerical results show that the MAEDC achieves near‐optimal energy consumption with better delay profile compared with the optimal solution. Moreover, due to the possibility of distributed and parallel processing, the proposed method is proper for the online situation where the delay is a crucial issue.     

QoS‐Guaranteed Multiuser Scheduling in MIMO Broadcast Channels

This paper proposes a new multiuser scheduling algorithm that can simultaneously support a variety of different quality‐of‐service (QoS) user groups while satisfying fairness among users in the same QoS group in MIMO broadcast channels. Toward this goal, the proposed algorithm consists of two parts: a QoS‐aware fair (QF) scheduling within a QoS group and an antenna trade‐off scheme between different QoS groups. The proposed QF scheduling algorithm finds a user set from a certain QoS group which can satisfy the fairness among users in terms of throughput or delay. The antenna trade‐off scheme can minimize the QoS violations of a higher priority user group by trading off the number of transmit antennas allocated to different QoS groups. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed QF scheduling method satisfies different types of fairness among users and can adjust the degree of fairness among them. The antenna trade‐off scheme combined with QF scheduling can improve the probability of QoS‐guaranteed transmission when supporting different QoS groups.     

Wireless Packet Scheduling Algorithm for OFDMA System Based on Time‐Utility and Channel State

In this paper, we propose an urgency‐ and efficiencybased wireless packet scheduling (UEPS) algorithm that is able to schedule real‐time (RT) and non‐real‐time (NRT) traffics at the same time while supporting multiple users simultaneously at any given scheduling time instant. The UEPS algorithm is designed to support wireless downlink packet scheduling in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system, which is a strong candidate as a wireless access method for the next generation of wireless communications. The UEPS algorithm uses the time‐utility function as a scheduling urgency factor and the relative status of the current channel to the average channel status as an efficiency indicator of radio resource usage. The design goal of the UEPS algorithm is to maximize throughput of NRT traffics while satisfying quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements of RT traffics. The simulation study shows that the UEPS algorithm is able to give better throughput performance than existing wireless packet scheduling algorithms such as proportional fair (PF) and modifiedlargest weighted delay first (M‐LWDF), while satisfying the QoS requirements of RT traffics such as average delay and packet loss rate under various traffic loads.     

Improvement in DRX Power Saving for Non‐real‐time Traffic in LTE

A discontinuous reception (DRX) operation is included in the Long Term Evolution (LTE) system to achieve power saving and prolonged battery life of the user equipment. An improvement in DRX power saving usually leads to a potential increase in the packet delay. An optimum DRX configuration depends on the current traffic, which is not easy to estimate accurately, particularly for non‐real‐time applications. In this paper, we propose a novel way to vary the DRX cycle length, avoiding a continuous estimation of the data traffic when only non‐real‐time applications are running with no active real‐time applications. Because a small delay in non‐real‐time traffic does not essentially impact the user's experience adversely, we deliberately allow a limited amount of delay in our proposal to attain a significant improvement in power saving. Our proposal also improves the delay in service resumption after a long period of inactivity. We use a stochastic analysis assuming an M/G/1 queue to validate this improvement.     

A preemption‐based scheduling algorithm for WiMAX networks

Several scheduling techniques were designed for the base station (BS) of IEEE 802.16e wireless interoperability of microwave access networks. However, depending on the BS scheduler alone to determine the servicing order of each connection might affect the accuracy of the scheduling process because the BS does not necessarily have enough up‐to‐date information about the current state of the connections at the subscriber station. In this paper, we propose a preemption‐based scheduling algorithm that focuses on improving the quality of service requirements of real‐time service flow classes. The proposed algorithm incorporates two schedulers, one at the BS and another one at the subscriber station. We have implemented and integrated the proposed algorithm with the network simulator NS2 using the Network and Distributed Systems Laboratory wireless interoperability of microwave access module. Simulation results have shown that the proposed approach outperforms other scheduling algorithms in terms of enhancing the throughput and the average delay of real‐time quality of service classes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal power scheduling in 802.11n wireless networks for real‐time services

The growing popularity of mobile devices in our daily life demands higher throughput of wireless networks. The new communication standard 802.11n has significantly improved throughput because of the use of advanced technologies such as the multiple‐input multiple‐output communication technique. Because mobile devices are usually battery‐operated, power efficiency is critical; on the other hand, delay performance can be improved by transmitting at high power. To address the conflicting requirement of power saving and small delay, power scheduling is needed. In the past, many approaches to power scheduling have been proposed for real‐time applications, but few of them have considered complicated modes of channel state information(CSI) in multiple‐input multiple‐output. In this paper, we study this and classify the CSI into four types, namely, constant, slow fading, fast fading, and unknown. For known CSI, we propose an optimal algorithm for power scheduling. For unknown CSI, we propose an approximate algorithm based on some heuristics. To improve resource utilization, a stochastic delay‐bound method is proposed for fast‐fading condition. Simulation results demonstrate that the performance achieved by the optimal and heuristic algorithms agrees well with the analysis. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

QoS‐aware cross‐domain collaborative energy‐saving mechanism for FiWi virtual networks

The fiber‐wireless (FiWi) access network is a very promising solution for next‐generation access networks. Because of the different protocols between its subnets, it is hard to globally optimize the operation of FiWi networks. Network virtualization technology is applied to FiWi networks to realize the coexistence of heterogeneous networks and centralized control of network resource. The existing virtual resource management methods always be designed to optimize virtual network (VN) request acceptance rate and survivability, but seldom consider energy consumption and varied requirements of quality of service (QoS) satisfaction, which is a hot and important topic in the industrial field. Therefore, this paper focuses on the QoS‐aware cross‐domain collaborative energy saving mechanism for FiWi virtual networks. First, the virtual network embedding (VNE) model, energy consumption model, and VNE profit model of FiWi networks are established. Then, a QoS‐aware in‐region VN embedding mechanism is proposed to guarantee service quality of different services. After that, an underlying resource updating mechanism based on energy efficiency awareness is designed to realize low‐load ONU and wireless routers co‐sleep in FiWi networks. Finally, a QoS‐aware re‐embedding mechanism is presented to allocate proper resource to the VNs affected by the sleeping mechanism. Especially for video VNs, a re‐embedding scheme which adopts traffic splitting and multipath route is introduced to meet resource limitation and low latency. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism can reduce FiWi network's energy consumption, improve VNE profit, and ensure high embedding accepting rate and strict delay demand of high‐priority VNs.     

Frame‐based adaptive uplink scheduling algorithm in orthogonal frequency division multiple access‐based Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access networks

Because the orthogonal frequency division multiple access physical resource available for scheduling in Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access networks is frame by frame, an uplink scheduler located at the base station must efficiently allocate available resources to the subscriber stations in response to constant or bursty data traffic on a per‐frame basis. Available resources for real‐time and nonreal‐time traffics, called frame‐based adaptive bandwidth allocation and minimum guarantee and weight‐based bandwidth allocation, respectively, are proposed in this paper. Moreover, both short‐term and long‐term bandwidth predictions for traffic are incorporated so that the long‐term bandwidth prediction can have sustainable throughput requirement, and the short‐term bandwidth prediction can meet the objectives of low delay and jitter. For the scenarios studied, it shows that system performance of the proposed algorithm is better than the hybrid (earliest deadline first + weighted fair queuing + FIFO) algorithm in terms of packet delay, jitter, throughput, and fairness. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

QoS‐based radio network dimensioning for LTE networks with heavy real‐time traffic

Applications of video streaming and real‐time gaming, which generate large amounts of real‐time traffic in the network, are expected to gain considerable popularity in Long Term Evolution networks. Maintaining the QoS such as packet delay, packet loss ratio, median, and cell border throughput requirements in networks dominated by real time traffic, is critical. The existing dimensioning methodology does not consider QoS parameters of real‐time traffic in network dimensioning. Moreover, exhaustive and time‐consuming simulations are normally required to evaluate the performance and QoS of real‐time services. To overcome this problem, we propose an improved radio network dimensioning framework that considers the QoS of real‐time traffic in network dimensioning. In this framework, an analytical model is proposed to evaluate the capacity and performance of real‐time traffic dominant Long Term Evolution networks. The proposed framework provides a fast and accurate means of finding the trade‐off between system load, packet delay, packet loss ratio, required median, and cell border throughput. It also provides network operators with an analytical means for obtaining the minimum number of sites required by jointly considering coverage, capacity and QoS requirements. The accuracy of the proposed model is validated through simulations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An optimized QoS scheme for IMS‐NEMO in heterogeneous networks

The network mobility (NEMO) is proposed to support the mobility management when users move as a whole. In IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), the individual Quality of Service (QoS) control for NEMO results in excessive signaling cost. On the other hand, current QoS schemes have two drawbacks: unawareness of the heterogeneous wireless environment and inefficient utilization of the reserved bandwidth. To solve these problems, we present a novel heterogeneous bandwidth sharing (HBS) scheme for QoS provision under IMS‐based NEMO (IMS‐NEMO). The HBS scheme selects the most suitable access network for each session and enables the new coming non‐real‐time sessions to share bandwidth with the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) coded media flows. The modeling and simulation results demonstrate that the HBS can satisfy users' QoS requirement and obtain a more efficient use of the scarce wireless bandwidth. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.