Packet Scheduling with QoS and Fairness for Downlink Traffic in WiMAX Networks

The IEEE 802.16 standard is supposed to provide a wide-range broadband wireless service, but it leaves the implementation of the wireless resource scheduler as an open issue. We have studied the scheduling problem and propose a two level scheduling (TLS) scheme with support for quality of service and fairness guarantees for downlink traffic in a WiMAX network. A central controller Base Station has a number of users, and each mobile subscriber station has different channel conditions. The same mobile subscriber station may have different service requirements at different times in the WiMAX network. Based on OPNET simulation, the results show our scheduling algorithm can increase the network throughput, maintain relative fairness, and lower delay over the round robin and weighted round robin algorithms. Keywords—IEEE.802.16, Scheduling, Round Robin, Weighted Proportional, Fairness