An interference and latency aware uplink scheduling mechanism in IEEE 802.16j networks

IEEE 802.16j spreads out the coverage of WiMAX networks and strengthens wireless signal transmission using relay technology. To take advantage of relaying in IEEE 802.16j networks, an efficient scheduling schedule with quality of service (QoS) provision for multiple link transmissions is necessary, especially when link interference exists. In this paper, we propose an uplink scheduling mechanism in the transparent mode of IEEE 802.16j, which enables multiple devices to transmit without interference. The maximum latency of each connection has been considered in order to optimize the violation and transmission rate. An interference detection task is first carried out, and then a resource allocation algorithm and a dynamic frame adjustment method are developed. Two simulation experiments were conducted with different interference levels. The results demonstrate that under a fixed QoS type of connection, when the total number of connections goes up to 360 and 420 and the maximum latency violation rate approaches 20%, the average uplink transmission rate of the proposed mechanism can achieve 6.67 and 7.92 Mbps, which apparently outperform regular relay scheduling schemes with rate of 4 and 3.91 Mbps, respectively.