Ensuring the QoS requirements in 802.16 scheduling

TLDR

IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) is a wireless broadband standard that supports MAC‑level QoS, requiring base stations to allocate slots via scheduling algorithms. The authors propose a simple, efficient slot‑allocation solution for WiMAX base stations that considers QoS, bandwidth requests, and network parameters. The solution was implemented in the NS‑2 simulator to evaluate its performance. Simulations show the scheduler meets all WiMAX service class QoS requirements, fairly shares free resources, and exhibits work‑conserving behavior.

Abstract

IEEE 802.16 standard defines the wireless broadband access network technology called WiMAX. WiMAX introduces several interesting advantages, and one of them is the support for QoS at the MAC level. For these purposes, the base station must allocate slots based on some algorithm. We propose a simple, yet efficient, solution for the WiMAX base station that is capable of allocating slots based on the QoS requirements, bandwidth request sizes, and the WiMAX network parameters. To test the proposed solution, we have implemented the WiMAX MAC layer in the NS-2 simulator. Several simulation scenarios are presented that demonstrate how the scheduling solution allocates resources in various cases. Simulation results reveal the proposed scheduling solution is ensures the QoS requirements of all the WiMAX service classes and shares fairly free resources achieving the work-conserving behaviour.