Performance of packet voice transmission using IEEE 802.16 protocol

The IEEE 802.16 standard defines three types of scheduling services for supporting real-time traffic, unsolicited grant service (UGS), real-time polling service (rtPS), and extended real-time polling service (ertPS). In the UGS service, the base station (BS) offers a fixed amount of bandwidth to a subscriber station (SS) periodically, and the SS does not have to make any explicit bandwidth requests. The bandwidth allocation in the rtPS service is updated periodically in the way that the BS periodically polls the SS, which makes a bandwidth request at the specified uplink time slots and receives a bandwidth grant in the following downlink subframe. In the ertPS service, the BS keeps offering the same amount of bandwidth to the SS unless explicitly requested by the SS. The SS makes a bandwidth request only if its required transmission rate changes. In this article we study the performance of voice packet transmissions and BS resource utilization using the three types of scheduling services in IEEE 802.16-based backhaul networks, where each SS forwards packets for a number of voice connections. Our results demonstrate that while the UGS service achieves the best latency performance, the rtPS service can more efficiently utilize the BS resource and flexibly trade-off between packet transmission performance and BS resource allocation efficiency; and appropriately choosing the MAC frame size is important in both the rtPS and ertPS services to reduce packet transmission delay and loss rate     

Performance Evaluation of the IEEE 802.16 MAC for QoS Support

The IEEE 802.16 is a standard for broadband wireless communication in metropolitan area networks (MAN). To meet the QoS requirements of multimedia applications, the IEEE 802.16 standard provides four different scheduling services: unsolicited grant service (UGS), real-time polling service (rtPS), non-real-time polling service (nrtPS), and Best Effort (BE). The paper is aimed at verifying, via simulation, the effectiveness of rtPS, nrtPS, and BE (but UGS) in managing traffic generated by data and multimedia sources. Performance is assessed for an IEEE 802.16 wireless system working in point-to-multipoint (PMP) mode, with frequency division duplex (FDD), and with full-duplex subscriber stations (SSs). Our results show that the performance of the system, in terms of throughput and delay, depends on several factors. These include the frame duration, the mechanisms for requesting uplink bandwidth, and the offered load partitioning, i.e., the way traffic is distributed among SSs, connections within each SS, and traffic sources within each connection. The results also highlight that the rtPS scheduling service is a very robust scheduling service for meeting the delay requirements of multimedia applications     

Integration of IEEE 802.11 WLANs with IEEE 802.16-based multihop infrastructure mesh/relay networks: A game-theoretic approach to radio resource management

One of the promising applications of IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX)-based wireless mesh/relay networks is to provide infrastructure/backhaul support for IEEE 802.11-based mobile hotspots. In this article we present an architecture for integrating IEEE 802.11 WLANs with IEEE 802.16-based multihop wireless mesh infrastructure to relay WLAN traffic to the Internet. The major research issues in this integrated architecture are outlined and related work is reviewed. A game-theoretic model is developed for radio resource management in this integrated network architecture. In particular, a multiplayer bargaining game formulation is used for fair bandwidth allocation and optimal admission control of different types of connections (e.g., WLAN connections, relay connections, and connections from standalone subscriber stations) in an IEEE 802.16 base station/mesh router. Both connection-level and inconnection-level performances for this bandwidth management and admission control framework are presented     

IEEE 802.16/WiMAX-based broadband wireless access and its application for telemedicine/e-health services

In this article we investigate the application of IEEE 802.16-based broadband wireless access (BWA) technology to telemedicine services and the related protocol engineering issues. An overview of the different evolutions of the IEEE 802.16 standard is presented and some open research issues are identified. A survey on radio resource management, traffic scheduling, and admission control mechanisms proposed for IEEE 802.16/WiMAX systems is also provided. A qualitative comparison between third-generation wireless systems and the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology is given. A survey on telemedicine services using traditional wireless systems is presented. The advantages of using IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology over traditional wireless systems, as well as the related design issues and approaches are discussed. To this end, we present a bandwidth allocation and admission control algorithm for IEEE 802.16-based BWA designed specifically for wireless telemedicine/e-health services. This algorithm aims at maximizing the utilization of the radio resources while considering the quality of service requirements for telemedicine traffic. Some performance evaluation results for this scheme are obtained by simulations     

Efficient routing and centralized scheduling algorithms for IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks

An IEEE 802.16 wireless system can provide broadband wireless access to subscriber stations and operate in mesh mode. The communication between a subscriber station and a base station can pass through one or more intermediate subscriber stations. The IEEE 802.16 standard provides a centralized scheduling mechanism that supports contention‐free and resource‐guarantee transmission services in mesh mode. However, the corresponding algorithm to this schedule is quite primitive in the standard. In this paper, we propose a more efficient way to realize this schedule by maximizing channel utilization. Our designs are divided into two phases: routing and scheduling. First, a routing tree topology is constructed from a given mesh topology by our proposed tree construction algorithm. Secondly, we allocate channel resources to the edges in the routing tree by our proposed scheduling algorithm. To further support the quality‐of‐service schedule, we extend our designs by addressing some issues such as service class, admission control and fairness. Simulation results show the superiority of our proposed algorithms over others. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive power allocation and call admission control in multiservice WiMAX access networks [Radio Resource Management and Protocol Engineering for IEEE 802.16]

To achieve a successful broadband wireless access solution, the IEEE 802.16 subcommittee has released a series of standards for WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access). From a technical viewpoint, WiMAX is a feasible alternative to the wired Internet access solutions such as cable modem and DSL. Nevertheless, from the commercial viewpoint, whether the promise of WiMAX will be materialized still depends on its revenue rate to telecom operators and its service quality to the subscribers. In such a context, this article addresses two resource management mechanisms in WiMAX access networks, that is, adaptive power allocation (APA) and call admission control (CAC), from the perspectives of both service providers and WiMAX subscribers. APA emphasizes how to share the limited power resource of base station among different WiMAX subscribers and further influences the access bandwidth of each subscriber; CAC highlights how to assign a subscriber's access bandwidth to different types of applications. Moreover, to build a WiMAX access network, APA and CAC have to work cooperatively to provide cross-layer resource management. In this article we focus on the OFDMA-TDD system, which allows high spectrum-utility efficiency on uplink and downlink channels in the asymmetric scenario of "lastmile" Internet access. We conclude the article with an optimization strategy to balance service provider's revenue and subscriber's satisfaction     

Convergence of ethernet PON and IEEE 802.16 broadband access networks and its QoS-aware dynamic bandwidth allocation scheme

IEEE 802.16 and Ethernet Passive Optical Network (EPON) are two promising broadband access technologies for high-capacity wireless access networks and wired access networks, respectively. They each can be deployed to facilitate connection between the end users and the Internet but each of them suffers from some drawbacks if operating separately. To combine the bandwidth advantage of optical networks with the mobility feature of wireless communications, we propose a convergence of EPON and 802.16 networks in this paper. First, this paper starts with presenting the converged network architecture and especially the concept of virtual ONU-BS (VOB). Then, it identifies some unique research issues in this converged network. Second, the paper investigates a dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) scheme and its closely associated research issues. This DBA scheme takes into consideration the specific features of the converged network to enable a smooth data transmission across optical and wireless networks, and an end-toend differentiated service to user traffics of diverse QoS (Quality of Service) requirements. This QoS-aware DBA scheme supports bandwidth fairness at the VOB level and class-of-service fairness at the 802.16 subscriber station level. The simulation results show that the proposed DBA scheme operates effectively and efficiently in terms of network throughput, average/maximum delay, resource utilization, service differentiation, etc.     

Efficient Uplink Bandwidth Request with Delay Regulation for Real-Time Service in Mobile WiMAX Networks

The emerging broadband wireless access technology based on IEEE 802.16 is one of the most promising solutions to provide ubiquitous wireless access to the broadband service at low cost. This paper proposes an efficient uplink bandwidth request-allocation algorithm for real-time services in Mobile WiMAX networks based on IEEE 802.16e. In order to minimize bandwidth wastage without degrading quality of service (QoS), we introduce a notion of target delay and propose dual feedback architecture. The proposed algorithm calculates the amount of bandwidth request such that the delay is regulated around the desired level to minimize delay violation and delay jitter for real-time services. Also, it can increase utilization of wireless channel by making use of dual feedback, where the bandwidth request is adjusted based on the information about the backlogged amount of traffic in the queue and the rate mismatch between packet arrival and service rates. Due to the target delay and dual feedback, the proposed scheme can control delay and allocate bandwidth efficiently while satisfying QoS requirement. The stability of the proposed algorithm is analyzed from a control-theoretic viewpoint, and a simple design guideline is derived based on this analysis. By implementing the algorithm in OPNET simulator, its performance is evaluated in terms of queue regulation, optimal bandwidth allocation, delay controllability, and robustness to traffic characteristics.     

Study of the IEEE 802.16 contention-based request mechanism

Broadband wireless access systems offer a solution for broadband access and QoS-aware multimedia services through a wireless medium. The IEEE 802.16 standards specify the physical and medium access control layers for broadband wireless access systems as well as the various mechanisms to meet the quality of service (QoS) requirements of a wide variety of applications. Among the mechanisms defined by the standards, the bandwidth request and grant mechanisms play a central role on guaranteeing the QoS required by the subscriber stations. In this paper, we undertake the study of the bandwidth request mechanisms defined in the IEEE 802.16 standards. We then propose an approach for reducing the overhead required by the signalling mechanisms. Our simulation results show that our approach outperforms the mechanisms proposed in the IEEE 802.16 standards.     

Radio resources allocation for decentrally controlled relay stations

To enhance throughput and to extend coverage of wireless networks based on IEEE 802.16 standards, relay stations can be implemented. The crucial point influencing the overall system performance is allocation of appropriate amount of resources to individual relay stations depending on their current needs. If resources are not allocated properly, relay stations can experience congestion situations resulting in system throughput decrease and packet delays increase. If the base station is enhanced purely by centrally controlled relay stations, the base station itself is able to dynamically schedule data transmissions of its relays. Nevertheless, decentrally controlled relays schedule data for its users on its own and the base station is no longer capable to allocate the right amount of radio resources for them. The decentrally controlled relays have to ask for radio resources by means of existing scheduling services defined in IEEE 802.16 standard. While utilization of the conventional unsolicited grant service decreases the system capacity, the use of real-time polling or extended real-time polling services results in higher signaling overhead and longer packet delays. In order to maximize system throughput and to minimize packet delays and signaling overhead, we suggest a mechanism that pre-allocates to decentrally controlled relay stations a certain amount of default radio resources while the remaining resources are dynamically shared. The obtained results show that for low traffic load, overhead and packet delays are significantly smaller as relays do not have to ask base stations for resources. On the other hand, at heavy traffic load the system throughput slightly decreases whereas packet delays and signaling overhead are still significantly smaller.     

WIRELESS BROADBAND ACCESS: WIMAX AND BEYOND - Investigation of Bandwidth Request Mechanisms under Point-to-Multipoint Mode of WiMAX Networks

The WiMAX standard specifies a metropolitan area broadband wireless access air interface. In order to support QoS for multimedia applications, various bandwidth request and scheduling mechanisms are suggested in WiMAX, in which a subscriber station can send request messages to a base station, and the base station can grant or reject the request according to the available radio resources. This article first compares two fundamental bandwidth request mechanisms specified in the standard, random access vs. polling under the point-to-multipoint mode, a mandatory transmission mode. Our results demonstrate that random access outperforms polling when the request rate is low. However, its performance degrades significantly when the channel is congested. Adaptive switching between random access and polling according to load can improve system performance. We also investigate the impact of channel noise on the random access request mechanism     

EPON和WiMAX融合架构下带宽分配和调度机制的研究

以太网无源光网络(EPON)和IEEE 802.16(WiMAX)的融合网络在固定移动混合接入网中被认为是很有前景的接入方式.文中提出了3种WiMAX无线网络与EPON网络系统融合架构,融合系统同时具有光网络的高带宽和无线网络的灵活性.为了在接入网中支持QoS,本文为融合结构提出了一种动态带宽分配算法(DBA)和调度机...     

TCP-aware bidirectional bandwidth allocation in IEEE 802.16 networks

In this paper, we propose a bidirectional bandwidth-allocation mechanism to improve TCP performance in the IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access networks. By coupling the bandwidth allocation for uplink and downlink connections, the proposed mechanism increases the throughput of the downlink TCP flow and it enhances the efficiency of uplink bandwidth allocation for the TCP acknowledgment (ACK). According to the IEEE 802.16 standard, when serving a downlink TCP flow, the transmission of the uplink ACK, which is performed over a separate unidirectional connection, incurs additional bandwidth-request/allocation delay. Thus, it increases the round trip time of the downlink TCP flow and results in the decrease of throughput accordingly. First, we derive an analytical model to investigate the effect of the uplink bandwidth-request/allocation delay on the downlink TCP throughput. Second, we propose a simple, yet effective, bidirectional bandwidth-allocation scheme that combines proactive bandwidth allocation with piggyback bandwidth request. The proposed scheme reduces unnecessary bandwidth-request delay and the relevant signaling overhead due to proactive allocation; meanwhile, it maintains high efficiency of uplink bandwidth usage by using piggyback request. Moreover, our proposed scheme is quite simple and practical; it can be simply implemented in the base station without requiring any modification in the subscriber stations or resorting to any cross-layer signaling mechanisms. The simulation results ascertain that the proposed approach significantly increases the downlink TCP throughput and the uplink bandwidth efficiency.     

A new CDMA-based bandwidth request method for IEEE 802.16 OFDMA/TDD systems

This paper proposes an efficient bandwidth request method for a non-real-time polling service and best effort service in the IEEE 802.16 system. The proposed method produces a bandwidth request code to indicate the channel quality and the necessary number of slots. The base station allocates uplink bandwidth depending on the bandwidth request code. Thus, the proposed method can omit the transmission procedure of the bandwidth request message. The performance analysis results show that the proposed method can reduce the delay for the uplink data transmission.     

下一代移动WiMAX系统中的分组调度策略

IEEE802．16m是由移动WiMAX演进而来的4G候选技术之一,体现了宽带移动化与固定移动融合的发展趋势。在MAC层连接管理和业务QoS保证机制的基础上,采用合理的资源分配策略。尽可能地获得时域、频域和多用户分集增益。这对于实现4G系统性能目标起到关键作用。本文讨论了现有单业务分组调度策略和多业务调度框架,并结合802．16m技术特点分析了分组调度所面临的更多挑战。     

Radio resource management games in wireless networks: an approach to bandwidth allocation and admission control for polling service in IEEE 802.16 [Radio Resource Management and Protocol Engineering for IEEE 802.16]

Game theory is a mathematical tool developed to understand competitive situations in which rational decision makers interact to achieve their objectives. Game theory techniques have recently been applied to various engineering design problems in which the action of one component impacts (and perhaps conflicts with) that of any other component. In particular, game theory techniques have been successfully used for protocol design and optimization (e.g., radio resource management, power control) in wireless networks. In this article we present an overview of different game theory formulations. Then a survey on the game-theory-based resource management and admission control schemes in different wireless networks is presented, and several open research issues are outlined. To this end, we propose an adaptive bandwidth allocation and admission control scheme for polling service in an IEEE 802.16-based wireless metropolitan area network. A noncooperative game is formulated, and the solution of this game is determined by the Nash equilibrium for the amount of bandwidth offered to a new connection. The admission control policy ensures QoS for all connections in the system     

Modeling Contention Based Bandwidth Request Scheme for IEEE 802.16 Networks

IEEE 802.16 standard specifies a contention based bandwidth request scheme for best-effort and non-real time polling services in point-to-multipoint (PMP) architecture. In this letter we propose an analytical model for the scheme and study how the performances of bandwidth efficiency and channel access delay change with the contention window size, the number of contending subscriber stations, the number of slots allocated for bandwidth request and data transmission. Simulations validate its high accuracy.     

QoS-aware Two-level Dynamic Uplink Bandwidth Allocation Algorithms in IEEE 802.16j Based Vehicular Networks

Wireless communications play an important role in improving transportation environment safety and providing Internet access for vehicles. This paper proposes a QoS-aware two-level uplink dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) algorithm for IEEE 802.16j-based vehicular networks. IEEE 802.16j is an extension of standard IEEE 802.16 to support relay mode operation where traffics from/to subscriber stations (SS) are relayed to/from a base station (BS) via a relay station (RS). In such a vehicular network, the IEEE 802.16j BSs are installed along a highway, RSs are installed in large vehicles such as coaches, and the 802.16j interface is equipped on SSs such as individual passengers’ mobile devices within a moving coach. In the proposed DBA algorithm, a utility function, which considers characteristics of different types of services, is designed. The objective of the proposed two-level DBA algorithm is to allocate bandwidth to different types of services from BS to RSs and then from a RS to SSs with given quality of service (QoS) requirements. It aims at maximizing the utility of the overall network and minimizing the average queuing delay of the overall network. The simulation results show the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed DBA algorithm.     

Performance Optimization with Efficient Polling Mechanism in IEEE 802.16 Networks with Cross-Layer Consideration

IEEE 802.16 standard suite defines a reservation-based bandwidth allocation mechanism. A SS (Subscriber Station) has to be polled to request bandwidth reservation before transmits uplink data to a BS (Base Station). In this mechanism exist two main polling modes: the unicast polling mode and the contention-based polling mode. The different polling operations in MAC (Medium Access Control) result in different PHY (PHYsical layer) frame structure that deeply affect the performance. Therefore, there should be an optimal scheme to adopt these two polling modes in order to optimize the performance. Although the standard defines five service classes to adaptively use the polling modes to fit the QoS (Quality of Service) requirements of different applications, it does not specify exactly a scheme to adopt these two polling modes efficiently and fairly during the polling process. In~this paper, we investigate the polling mechanisms in IEEE 802.16 networks, and focus the attention on the performance caused by different adoption schemes. We also propose a simple but efficient polling mechanism to optimize the performance. The simulation results verify that the performance is conditioned to the fulfillment of the polling mechanisms and our proposed optimal polling scheme can allocate bandwidth more efficient and achieve better performance.     

An efficient scheduling scheme with diverse traffic demands in IEEE 802.16 networks

In IEEE 802.16 networks, a subscriber station (SS) could be a single mobile user, a residence house, or an office building providing Internet service for multiple customers. Considering the heterogeneity among SSs which have diverse traffic demands, in this paper, we introduce the weighted proportional fair (WPF) scheduling scheme for the Best Effort (BE) service in IEEE 802.16 networks to achieve the flexible and efficient resource allocation. We develop an analytical model to investigate the performance of WPF in terms of spectral efficiency, throughput, resource utilization, and fairness, where the Rayleigh fading channel and the adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) technique are considered. Extensive simulations are conducted to illustrate the efficiency of the WPF scheduling scheme and verify the accuracy of the analytical model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.