A placement mechanism for relay stations in 802.16j WiMAX networks

IEEE 802.16j standard defines Relay Station (RS) to enhance network throughput. Deploying RSs within the serving area of the Base Station (BS) could increase network throughput but raise the hardware cost problem. This paper presents a deployment algorithm for IEEE 802.16j network. According to the history traffic of internet usage, the proposed algorithm deploys as few as possible RSs at suitable locations such that the traffic requirement of each subarea can be satisfied. The proposed relay deployment algorithm mainly consists of three phases. The first phase aims to construct several promising zones where a RS deployed in each zone can improve the transmission rate from mobile station to BS. The second phase further combines several zones into a bigger one aiming at reducing the number of deployed RSs. The last phase selects the relay zones from the promising zones and deploys one RS in each relay zone. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm can deploy the RSs at the most appropriate locations and hence efficiently reduce transmission delay and save the hardware cost.     

A Spectrally Efficient Macrodiversity Handover Technique for Interference‐Limited IEEE 802.16j Multihop Wireless Relay Networks

In this paper, we propose an efficient macrodiversity handover (MDHO) technique for time‐division‐based interference‐limited IEEE 802.16j multihop wireless relay networks. In the proposed MDHO, when the diversity set members of the mobile station (MS) are a base station (BS) and relay station (RS), the MS receives the signal transmitted by the BS in the first phase. During the second phase, it also receives the simultaneous transmissions of the BS and RS. Furthermore, when the diversity set members are two RSs or two BSs, the MS receives only the simultaneous transmissions of the diversity set members. The superiority of the proposed MDHO is validated using analytical and simulation results. The performance analysis metrics are the average downlink (DL) carrier to interference and noise ratio (CINR), the average DL spectral efficiency, and the average service outage probability. Evaluation results show that the proposed MDHO significantly outperforms the conventional MDHO. The CINR gain achieved using the proposed MDHO is 4.71 dB compared to the conventional MDHO.     

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access resource allocation in mobile multihop relay networks using an adaptive frame structure

For wireless mobile multihop relay (MMR) networks, we have chosen orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and time division duplex as a multiple access scheme and a duplex communication technique, respectively. We have also selected nontransparent relay stations (nt‐RSs) as relay nodes to extend the MMR network coverage. Through the nt‐RSs, far‐off subscriber stations (SSs) or hidden SSs can communicate with a base station (BS) that is connected to backhaul networks. In these MMR networks, the way in which a BS and nt‐RSs use OFDMA resources (e.g., OFDMA symbols and subcarriers) and share them might reduce system capacity and network throughput. Therefore, we proposed a new adaptive OFDMA frame structure for both the BS and the nt‐RSs. The proposed scheme is the first approach that incorporates the adaptive technique for wireless MMR networks. Based on the proposed adaptive OFDMA frame structure, an adaptive OFDMA resource allocation for SSs within a BS as well as nt‐RSs was proposed. To derive the maximum OFDMA resource that nt‐RSs can be assigned and to synchronize access zones and relay zones between a superior station and its subordinate nt‐RSs, three properties are introduced: a data relay property, a maximum balance property, and a relay zone limitation property. In addition, we propose max‐min and proportional fairness schemes of the proposed adaptive frame structure. Our numerical analysis and simulations show that the proposed OFDMA allocation scheme performs better than the nonadaptive allocation scheme in terms of network throughput and fairness especially in the asymmetric distribution of subscriber stations between access zones and relay zones in the MMR networks. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive point-to-point communication approach for subscriber stations in broadband wireless networks

The point-to-multipoint (PMP) mode is considered the well-adopted transmission type that is supported by the IEEE 802.16 standard. The base station (BS) is served as the centralized coordinator to control and forward packets for the subscriber stations (SSs) within the network. In the case that two SSs intend to conduct packet transmission, it is required for the packets to be rerouted to the BS before arriving at the destination SS. The communication bandwidth is apparently wasted due to the rerouting processes. In this paper, an adaptive point-to-point communication (APC) approach is proposed to achieve direct communication between SSs within the PMP mode of the IEEE 802.16 standard. The BS is coordinating and arranging specific time intervals for the two SSs that are actively involved in packet transmission. Based on channel conditions among the BS and the SSs, the packet transmission operation is switched between direct communication and indirect communication in the APC approach. Both the architectural design and analytical modeling of the proposed scheme are conducted in this paper. The effectiveness of the proposed APC approach in terms of user throughput and its corresponding overhead can be observed via both the analytical and simulation results.     

Adaptive Cost-Based with Max–Min AMC Routing Algorithm for Increasing Utilization and Reducing Blocking in IEEE 802.16j WiMAX Networks

Based on the IEEE 802.16e standard, WiMAX has proposed a relay-based mechanism, namely IEEE 802.16j, to extend the service area of the Multihop Relay Base Stations (MR-BSs) and to improve the Received Signal Strength quality. IEEE 802.16j thus can achieve two significant advantages: extending the WiMAX service area with a low-cost solution and compatible with the existing WiMAX specifications. The Relay Station (RS) can be classified into three types: Fixed RS, Nomadic RS and Mobile RS according to diverse features of mobility and relaying range. A multihop-relay WiMAX network including various types of RSs exhibits a critical routing issue, i.e., how to determine an efficient relay-based routing path between a Mobile Station (MS) and a MR-BS. This paper thus proposes an IEEE 802.16j-conformed relay-based adaptive competitive on-line routing approach that focuses on the Non-Transparent Relay-Station (NT-RS) mode, where the path with the least cost and the highest AMC coding rate will be selected in terms of the link bandwidth, path length and channel conditions. Numerical results indicate that the proposed routing approach significantly outperforms other approaches in Fractional Reward Loss, network utilization and average end-to-end path delay.     

Synchronous multicast and broadcast service in multi-rate IEEE 802.16j WiMAX relay network

IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multihop Relay Standard defines multi-hop relay operation in a WiMAX system. It uses a novel synchronous multicast and broadcast transmission mechanism to achieve macro diversity. With the newly introduced synchronous delivery constraint, the multicast data delivery algorithm should be designed differently to enhance system performance. This paper provides Multi-Rate Selection Algorithm (MRSA) for multicast and broadcast (MBS) data delivery. It could reduce the data distribution delay from the BS to all the RSs. Besides, we also propose the path selection algorithm to further improve the effectiveness of MRSA. Our simulation results show that using MRSA with our shortest-path path selection algorithm, the delay for data delivery in 802.16j MBS system could be greatly reduced. The proposed scheme could achieve the performance closed to the optimal solutions. To the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first research work to investigate the IEEE 802.16j multicast and broadcast problem.     

Load-Based Power Saving in IEEE 802.16j Multi-Hop Relay Networks

In this paper, our previous work of Load-Based Power Saving (LBPS) for energy saving at the user side is extended to support integrated sleep scheduling for BS, RS, and MSS in the IEEE 802.16j Multi-Hop Relay Network. Topology-dependent time frame structure is adopted in our design to reduce the transmission delay in the relay network, in which the number of relay zone (for transmission over the relay link) depends on the hop count of RS in the network. Focused on non-real-time traffic, two LBPS schemes, namely LBPS-Aggr-MR and LBPS-Merge-MR, are proposed. Simulation study shows the proposed LBPS schemes significantly outperform the standard Type I PSC in terms of power saving efficiency.     

Performance evaluation of the MAC protocol in IEEE 802.16 systems with data and VoiP traffic scheduling

In the last few years, the metropolitan area networks (MAN) have increased their popularity and attracted the interest of the most important research groups all over the world. Among several standards, IEEE 802.16 has taken a relevant role providing high data rate in a big covering range with low implementation costs and multi‐traffic communications. The IEEE 802.16 networks can have a pre‐defined structure, with a central base station (BS) covering a cell in which a variable number of subscriber stations (SSs) can work. This paper deals with the proposal of a quality of service (QoS) driven scheduling algorithm to be used in an IEEE 802.16 network where different traffic types coexist. In particular, the paper mainly focuses on best effort data and VoIP communications, by proposing a scheduling technique that allows an efficient resource management of both traffic types by considering their specific QoS flavor. The performance evaluation has been carried out by considering both the phases of contention and packet scheduling, by means of a theoretical approach and computer simulations. Numerical results show the performance of the proposed algorithm by focusing on a scenario where the BS schedules the best effort and VoIP traffics of several SSs. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving IPTV Forwarding Mechanism in IEEE 802.16j MMR Networks Based on Aggregation

Internet protocol television (IPTV) service depends on the network quality of service (QoS) and bandwidth of the broadband service provider. IEEE 802.16j mobile multihop relay Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access networks have the opportunity to offer high bandwidth capacity by introducing relay stations. However, to actually satisfy QoS requirements for offering IPTV services (HDTV, SDTV, Web TV, and mobile TV) for heterogeneous users' requests, providers must use a video server for each IPTV service type, which increases the network load, especially bandwidth consumption and forwarding time. In this paper, we present a solution for forwarding IPTV video streaming to diverse subscribers via an 802.16j broadband wireless access network. In particular, we propose a new multicast tree construction and aggregation mechanism based on the unique property of prime numbers. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed scheme reduces both bandwidth consumption and forwarding time.     

Joint Opportunistic Spectrum Sharing and Dynamic Full Frequency Reuse in OFDMA Cellular Relay Networks

This paper considers the problem of spectrum sharing in orthogonal frequency division multiple access cellular relay networks. Firstly, a novel dynamic full frequency reuse scheme is proposed to improve the spectral efficiency. Different from the conventional full frequency reuse scheme which only allows the base station (BS) reusing the subcarriers in the specific regions, an improved full frequency reuse scheme is proposed to allow the BS reusing all the subcarriers in the whole BS coverage region to exploit additional multiuser diversity gain. In order to dynamically reuse the frequency resource among the BS and relay stations (RSs) to further improve the spectral efficiency, the adaptive subcarrier scheduling is introduced into the improved full frequency reuse scheme to obtain more multi-user diversity gain, which forms the proposed novel dynamic full frequency reuse scheme. Secondly, in order to further increase the system throughput, the opportunistic spectrum sharing scheme is introduced to allow the RSs selectively reusing the subcarriers among each other, which joint with the proposed dynamic full frequency reuse scheme to intelligently allocates the subcarriers originally reused by the BS and a RS to another suitable RS which can best improve the system performance after considering the additional interference. Thirdly, in order to select The optimal reusing combination scheme of BS and RSs to exploit more potential system performance, a heuristic approach based on genetic algorithm is proposed to search the optimal BS and RSs combination to opportunistically share the frequency resource. Simulation results show that the proposed dynamic full frequency reuse scheme can obtain high spectral efficiency, fine fairness and low outage probability compared to the conventional full frequency reuse scheme. Furthermore, the system performance can be improved when considering the opportunistic spectrum sharing among RSs. Finally, after adopting the genetic algorithm, the system performance can be greatly improved by the frequency reusing among the optimal BS and RSs combination.     

Complete architecture and demonstration design for a new combined WiMAX/DSRC system with improved vehicular networking efficiency

This paper provides a detailed architecture and demonstration system for a new combined Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) network layer design for providing Internet access to vehicles. The overall design consists of subscriber station (SS) vehicles, cluster head relay station (RS) vehicles, WiMAX base stations (BSs), and Internet access gateways (IAGs). Here RSs serve as intermediate relays for serving virtual WiMAX connections to SS vehicles, relying on a WiMAX backend network for Internet connectivity. Simulation results show that our proposed system significantly improves the overall system efficiency as compared to the conventional WiMAX-only system, motivating a design of a complete WiMAX/DSRC Internet access architecture. The first main focus of this paper is on the layer 3 network protocol (L3NP) operating between the access concentrator (AC) in the SS instances and the Network Server (NS) component of an IAG, which provides Internet service to user applications. The second main focus of this paper is on the WiMAX backend network protocol (WBNP) and backend connection networking for handling traffic between the BS nodes and the IAG node providing the L3NP service to the vehicles. Finally, the third main focus of this paper is on the demonstration system design which takes all of the above mentioned elements, namely SS, RS, BS, and IAG modules, network entry functionality, to network protocol settings and behaviour, and implements them in an object-oriented design for accurate scenario performance and feasibility testing. The demonstration system implements tunnelling of protocols in the same way as an actual implementation, but uses virtual network devices for each module to facilitate communications. We provide example use cases for using our proposed architecture design with our provided demonstration system to serve as a useful tool to vehicular communications and networking engineers/researchers, that can be reconstructed and adapted as needed for derivative designs and scenarios.     

Cellular CDMA capacity with out-of-band multihop relaying

In this paper, we consider the capacity of cellular code division multiple access (CDMA) when there is out-of-band ad hoc traffic relaying. The mobile stations (MSs) are dual-mode, having both ad hoc and cellular CDMA radios. An active MS is free to choose any available relay station (RS) within its ad hoc radio coverage area for dual-hop communication with the CDMA base station (BS). Communications between the RSs and the MSs use bandwidth which is available to the ad hoc radio and does not consume the CDMA capacity. Using this mechanism, CDIVIA interference can be reduced by dynamically selecting RSs which have more favorable CDMA link characteristics. Several relay station selection criteria are considered, namely, ad hoc relaying with low relative interference (ARRI), with best link gain (ARLG), and with shortest distance (ARSD). The relay station selection protocols are compatible with existing wireless local area network (WLAN) standards such as IEEE 802.11. An analytic model is used to compute the effects on uplink and downlink CDMA capacities when out-of-band relaying is added. The results show that very significant capacity improvements are possible by using these criteria compared with conventional CDMA with hard or soft handoff. Ad hoc relaying which dynamically tracks CDMA link quality can achieve greater capacity improvements than that using a distance-based relay station selection. Relaying, which considers both signal and interference conditions, achieves better capacity than that based on signal link quality alone.     

The future of WiMAX: Multihop relaying with IEEE 802.16j

Relaying and cooperation have re-emerged as important research topics in wireless communication over the past half-decade. Although multihop relaying for coverage extension in wireless networks is an old concept, it became practical only recently. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the IEEE 802.16 working group, which has devoted a task group to incorporating relay capabilities in the foundation of mobile WiMAX-IEEE 802.16e-2005. Currently, this task group is in the process of finishing IEEE 802.16j, the Multihop Relay Specification for 802.16. This amendment will be fully compatible with 802.16e-2005 mobile and subscriber stations, but a BS specific to 802.16j will be required for relays to operate. This article presents an introduction to the upcoming IEEE 802.16j amendment and provides insight about the obstacles that practical system designers face when incorporating relaying into a wireless broadband network.     

Heterogeneous Vehicular Communication Architecture and Key Technologies

Vehicular networks have traditionally been used in specific scenarios, such as Electronic Toll Collection (ETC). New vehicular networks, however, support communication of safety information between vehicles using self-organized ad-hoc technology. Because of limitations in network architecture, current vehicular networks only provide communication for mobile terminals in a vehicle cluster. Vehicles cannot exchange information with an Intelligent Traffic System (ITS) control center nor can they access broadband wireless networks. This paper proposes a novel heterogeneous vehicular wireless architecture based on Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE, IEEE 802.11 p) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX,IEEE 802.16e). A new network infrastructure and system model is introduced, and key technologies are discussed. For WAVE, these technologies include adaptive multichannel coordination mechanism and scheduling algorithm; and for WiMAX, these technologies include group handover scheme and two-level resource allocation algorithm.     

Cross-layer Based Delay-constraint Adaptive Polling for High Density Subscribers in IEEE 802.16 WiMAX Networks

The IEEE 802.16 standard (namely WiMAX) is proposed to support QoS-aware transmission of real-time service in Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs). WiMAX also can operate as a wireless backbone, and then cooperates with WiFi to form a heterogeneous wireless network. Thus, hot spots of WiFi belonging to different WiMAX networks can communicate with each other. For achieving that a Base Station (BS) serves a large number of Subscriber Stations (SSs), WiMAX uses a centralized polling access mechanism instead of a random access mechanism. WiMAX thus avoids occurring access collisions but causes long polling delay under a high-density SSs situation. Consequently, IEEE 802.16 does not schedule real-time service (rtPS) while the BS is in multicast polling mode. This problem of long polling delay becomes worse when the BS serves high-density SSs, because the BS only polls some SSs or groups in every frame time. This paper thus proposes an adaptive polling approach with a cross-layer mechanism, which dynamically polls SSs among different polling modes while continuously supporting the rtPS service. The approach consists of two phases. The first phase adopts two hysteresises of number of SSs and residual bandwidth to determine the optimal polling mode for each connection. The second phase presents a novel QoS-aware rtPS service (QrtPS) that provides an Average Delay requirement instead of the Maximum Delay requirement to take over the rtPS service when a SS is polled by the multicast mode. Additionally, a cross-layer mechanism is proposed to achieve that the real-time applications can be sent with a high-quality or low-quality video codec when the SS is in unicast or multicast mode, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly outperforms IEEE 802.16 in average delay and network utilization. Furthermore, the collision probabilities of using different numbers of contention slots of an uplink subframe and different numbers of groups within a BS are evaluated for the multicast mode. The results meet the experiments.

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     

基于优先级的IEEE802.16系统接纳控制算法研究

鉴于IEEE802.16标准中未对接纳控制机制提出定义,为了提高系统带宽利用率,在分析现有无线网络接纳控制技术的基础上,结合IEEE802.16的具体机制提出了一种基于业务优先级的接纳控制算法。相比于先到先服务的接纳机制,该算法严格区分业务优先级,为不同优先级业务预留带宽,以保证实时业务的服务质量(QoS)要求。利用NS2网络模拟软件对算法进行了仿真和性能评估。结果表明,本接纳控制算法可以较好地保障高优先级业务的实时性,同时在重负载情况下系统带宽利用率有了明显提高。     

Utility-based admission control for mobile WiMAX networks

This paper presents a novel utility-based connection admission control (CAC) scheme for IEEE 802.16e broadband wireless access networks. We develop specific utility functions for real-time and non-real-time services coupled with a handover process. Given these utility functions we characterize the network utility with respect to the allocated bandwidth, and further propose a CAC algorithm which admits a connection that conducts to the greatest utility so as to maximize the total resource utilization. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CAC algorithm in terms of network utility.     

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     

AMC-based resource allocation in adaptive frequency reused OFDMA-relay networks

In orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) relay system, for supporting relay transmission, the base station (BS)-the relay station (RS) link must consume an extra part of resource, which may result in serious resource shortage. In oxder to improve resource utilization, this paper proposes a dynamic resource allocation scheme in adaptive frequency reused OFDMA-relay system based on adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) technology. In this scheme, relay nodes have two independent antennas and operate in decode-and-forward (DF) and full-duplex mode. Then the BS and RSs share the same subcarriers by spatial multiplexing by two independent antennas. The resource allocation problem is formulated for system downlink throughput maximization. Since the optimal solution couldn't be obtained easily, a sub-optimal algorithm is proposed.The adaptive frequency reused algorithm with two independent antennas RS improves the system throughput about 24.3 %compared with the orthogonal frequency allocation with single-antenna model, and increases the system throughput 10.4%compared with adaptive frequency reused algorithms with single-antenna RS. It is proved that both of the RS with two-antenna model and adaptive frequency reused scheme can improve the system throughput significantly.