A performance study of uplink scheduling algorithms in point to multipoint WiMAX networks.

摘要

Applications such as video and audio streaming, online gaming, video conferencing, Voice over IP (VoIP) and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) demand a wide range of QoS requirements such as bandwidth and delay. Existing wireless technologies that can satisfy the requirements of heterogeneous traffic are very costly to deploy in rural areas and "last mile" access. Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) provides an affordable alternative for wireless broadband access supporting a multiplicity of applications. The IEEE 802.16 standard provides specification for the Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical (PHY) layers for WiMAX. A critical part of the MAC layer specification is scheduling, which resolves contention for bandwidth and determines the transmission order of users.; It is imperative for a scheduling algorithm to have a multi-dimensional objective of satisfying QoS requirements of the users, maximizing system utilization and ensuring fairness among the users. In this thesis, we categorize and study various scheduling algorithms for the uplink traffic in WiMAX in view of these objectives. The algorithms are studied under different mixes of traffic and for various characteristics of the IEEE 802.16 MAC layer such as uplink burst preamble, frame length, bandwidth request mechanisms etc. Simulation results indicate that legacy algorithms are not suitable for the multi-class traffic in WiMAX as they do not explicitly incorporate the WiMAX QoS parameters. We provide recommendations for enhancing existing scheduling schemes in WiMAX, and shed light on some of the open issues that need to be addressed.