Cross-Layer MAC Protocol and Holistic Opportunistic Scheduling with Adaptive Power Control for QoS in WiMAX

Providing quality of service (QoS) to different service classes with integrated real-time and non-real-time traffic is an important issue in broadband wireless access networks. Opportunistic MAC (OMAC) is a novel view of communication over spatiotemporally varying wireless link whereby the multi-user diversity is exploited rather than combated to maximize bandwidth efficiency or system throughput. It combines cross-layer design features and opportunistic scheduling scheme to achieve high utilization while providing QoS support to various applications. Channel characteristics, traffic characteristics and queue characteristics are the essential factors in the design of opportunistic scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer MAC scheduling framework in WiMAX point-to-multipoint (PMP) systems and a corresponding opportunistic scheduling algorithm with an adaptive power control scheme to provide QoS support to the heterogeneous traffic. Extensive simulation experiments have been carried out to evaluate the performance of our proposal. The simulation results show that our proposed solution can improve the performance of the WiMAX PMP systems in terms of packet loss rate, packet delay and system throughput.     

Downlink scheduling for multimedia multicast/broadcast over mobile wimax: connection-oriented multistate adaptation - [Service-oriented broadband wireless network architecture]

With its comprehensive QoS support and ubiquitous coverage, the mobile WiMAX network offers promising opportunities for unwiring the last mile connectivity to Internet. However, stringent QoS demands of multimedia applications entail studies on service-oriented radio resource management. This article systematically examines the design issues and the state of the art of multimedia downlink scheduling in the multicast/broadcast-based WiMAX system. We propose a viable end-to-end framework, connection-oriented multistate adaptation, by considering cross-layer adaptations in source coding, queue prioritization, flow queuing, and scheduling. Its performance is confirmed by simulations on important metrics, showing that the framework can effectively accommodate heterogeneity in link variations, queue fluctuations, and reception diversities.     

Radio Network Aggregation for 5G Mobile Terminals in Heterogeneous Wireless and Mobile Networks

This paper provides a novel design concept for advanced mobile multi interface terminals with radio network aggregation capability and enhanced quality of service (QoS) provisioning for multimedia services (voice, video and data) in heterogeneous wireless and mobile networks. A new module is established which provides the best QoS and lowest cost for any given multimedia service by using simultaneously all available wireless and mobile access networks for a given traffic flow. This novel adaptive QoS module with adaptive QoS routing algorithm is called advanced QoS routing algorithm (AQoSRA), which is defined independently from any existing and future radio access technology. The performance of our proposal is evaluated using simulations and analysis with multi-interface mobile stations with AQoSRA within, carrying multimedia traffic in heterogeneous mobile and wireless environment with coexistence of multiple Radio Access Technologies, such as 3G, 4G as well as future 5G radio access networks. The analysis of the proposed framework for radio networks aggregation in advanced mobile terminals has shown overall better performances regarding the achievable throughput and multimedia access probability in heterogeneous wireless and mobile environment.     

A Cross-Layer Cognitive Radio-Based Framework and CAC Scheme in WiMAX Networks

Quality of service (QoS) provisioning is an important issue in the deployment of broadband wireless access networks with real-time and non-real-time traffic integration. The Connection Admission Control (CAC) operation is essential to guarantee the QoS requirements of connections while achieving system efficiency. Cognitive Radio is seen as a solution to the current low usage of the radio spectrum and the problem of the fixed spectrum allocation. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-layer Cognitive Radio-based QoS support framework and Cognitive Radio-based CAC scheme in WiMAX point-to-multipoint systems. By using a cross-layer approach, the proposed solution can intelligently explore unused spectrums and spread to non-active spectrums to improve the capacity of the system significantly and provide QoS guaranteed service to real-time traffic. A queueing analytical modeling for the WiAMX system has been carried out. The key system performance parameters are obtained based on the queueing analytical model theoretically. Extensive simulation experiments have been carried out to evaluate the performance of our proposal. The simulation results show that our proposed solution can expand the capacity of WiMAX systems up to two times while providing QoS guaranteed service to real-time and non-real-time traffics.     

Providing deterministic packet delays and packet losses in multimedia wireless networks

‘Anytime, anywhere’ communication, information access and processing are much cherished in modern societies because of their ability to bring flexibility, freedom and increased efficiency to individuals and organizations. Wireless communications, by providing ubiquitous and tetherless network connectivity to mobile users, are therefore bound to play a major role in the advancement of our society. Although initial proposals and implementations of wireless communications are generally focused on near‐term voice and electronic messaging applications, it is recognized that future wireless communications will have to evolve towards supporting a wider range of applications, including voice, video, data, images and connections to wired networks. This implies that future wireless networks must provide quality‐of‐service (QoS) guarantees to various multimedia applications in a wireless environment. Typical traffic in multimedia applications can be classified as either Constant‐Bit‐Rate (CBR) traffic or Variable‐Bit‐Rate (VBR) traffic. In particular, scheduling the transmission of VBR multimedia traffic streams in a wireless environment is very challenging and is still an open problem. In general, there are two ways to guarantee the QoS of VBR multimedia streams, either deterministically or statistically. In particular, most connection admission control (CAC) algorithms and medium access control (MAC) protocols that have been proposed for multimedia wireless networks only provide statistical, or soft, QoS guarantees. In this paper, we consider deterministic QoS guarantees in multimedia wireless networks. We propose a method for constructing a packet‐dropping mechanism that is based on a mathematical framework that determines how many packets can be dropped while the required QoS can still be preserved. This is achieved by employing: (1) An accurate traffic characterization of the VBR multimedia traffic streams; (2) A traffic regulator that can provide bounded packet loss and (3) A traffic scheduler that can provide bounded packet delay. The combination of traffic characterization, regulation and scheduling can provide bounded loss and delay deterministically. This is a distinction from traditional deterministic QoS schemes in which a 0% packet loss are always assumed with deterministically bounding the delay. We performed a set of performance evaluation experiments. The results will demonstrate that our proposed QoS guarantee schemes can significantly support more connections than a system, which does not allow any loss, at the same required QoS. Moreover, from our evaluation experiments, we found that the proposed algorithms are able to out‐perform scheduling algorithms adopted in state‐of‐the‐art wireless MAC protocols, for example Mobile Access Scheme Based on Contention and Reservation for ATM (MASCARA) when the worst‐case traffic is being considered. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

NOVEL MULTIMEDIA TRAFFIC MODELING BASED CAC SCHEME FOR CDMA COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

As the radio spectrum is a very scarce resource, the Call Admission Control （CAC） is one of the most important parts in radio resource management. The Code Division Multiple Access （CDMA） based next generation wireless communications systems will support the transmission of multimedia traffic, such as voice, video and data, thus the CAC, which can support the multimedia traffic and guarantee the Quality of Service （QoS） of different traffic, has gained broad attention. In this paper, a novel multimedia traffic modeling method and a corresponding dynamic QoS based CAC are proposed. The analysis and simulation results show that the proposed CAC scheme can guarantee the QoS to different traffic demand, and improve the system performance significantly.     

Adaptive scheduling mechanism for IPTV over WiMAX IEEE 802.16j networks

A WiMAX technology is a very promising Broadband Wireless Access technology that is able to transmit different service types. This latter can have different constraints such as traffic rate, maximum latency, and tolerated jitter. The IEEE 802.16 Medium Access Control specifies five types of QoS classes: UGS, rtPS, ertPS, nrtPS, and BE. However, the IEEE 802.16 standard does not specify the scheduling algorithm to be used. Operators have the choice among many existing scheduling techniques. Also, they can propose their own scheduling algorithms. In this paper, we propose a scheduling strategy (Adaptive Weighted Round Robin, AWRR) for various Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) services traffic over 802.16j networks. Our scheme adapts dynamically the scheduler operation to according queue load and quality of service constraints. In particular, the proposed mechanism gives more priority to high definition television and standard definition television traffic by using two schedulers. The proposed scheduling algorithm has been simulated using the QualNet network simulator. The experimental results show that our scheduler schemes AWRR have a better performance than the traditional scheduling techniques for rtPS traffic, which allows ensuring QoS requirements for IPTV application. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient Radio Resource Management in Integrated WLAN/CDMA Mobile Networks

The complementary characteristics of wireless local area networks (WLANs) and wideband code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular networks make it attractive to integrate these two technologies. How to utilize the overall radio resources optimally in this heterogeneous integrated environment is a challenging issue. This paper proposes an optimal joint session admission control scheme for multimedia traffic that maximizes overall network revenue with quality of service (QoS) constraints over both WLANs and CDMA cellular networks. WLANs operate under IEEE 802.11e medium access control (MAC) protocol, which supports QoS for multimedia traffic. A cross-layer optimization approach is used in CDMA networks taking into account both physical layer linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) receivers and network layer QoS requirements. Numerical examples illustrate that the network revenue earned in the proposed joint admission control scheme is significantly more than that when the individual networks are optimized independently.     

Cross-layer quality-driven adaptation for scheduling heterogeneous multimedia over 3G satellite networks

Wireless networks are experiencing a paradigm shift from focusing on the traditional data transfer to accommodating the rapidly increasing multimedia traffic. Hence, their scheduling algorithms have to concern not only network-oriented quality-of-service (QoS) profiles, but also application-oriented QoS targets. This is particularly challenging for satellite multimedia networks that lack fast closed-loop power control and reliable feedbacks. In this paper, we present a cross-layer packet scheduling scheme, namely Hybrid Queuing and Reception Adaptation (HQRA), which performs joint adaptations by considering the traffic information and QoS targets from the applications, the queuing dynamics induced from the network, as well as the end-to-end performance and channel variations from respective users. By jointly optimizing multiple performance criteria at different layers, the scheme enjoys quality-driven, channel-dependant, and network-aware features. HQRA can well accommodate return link diversity and the imperfect feedbacks, whilst ensuring robustness in highly heterogeneous and dynamic satellite environments. We evaluate its performance over diverse network and media configurations in comparison with the state-of-the-art solutions. We observe noticeable performance gains on application-oriented QoS, bandwidth utilization, and objective video quality, together with favorable fairness and scalability measures.     

Traffic scheduling in a photonic packet switching system with QoSguarantee

The main challenge in the design of future broadband networks is to efficiently support high-bandwidth multimedia services. Recent advances in the optical networking reveal that all optical networks offering multigigabit rate per wavelength may soon become economical as the underlying backbone in wide area networks, in which photonic switch plays a central role. Two issues are the essential in the design of photonic packet switching, the support of end-to-end virtual connections and the support of diverse quality-of-service (QoS) services. Existing work in wide-area optical networks has largely focused on the former, relatively less attention has been given to support heterogeneous traffic types and to satisfy the potentially different QoS requirements of different types of traffic. In this paper, we introduce a novel hierarchical scheduling framework to use in a class of photonic packet switching systems based on WDM, in which we separate the flow scheduling from the transmission scheduling. We show such separation is essential for achieving scalability such that large input-output ports can be accommodated, and also for offering flexibility in that optimal scheduling algorithms can be derived in different level that can be best tuned to the specific system requirements. The salient feature of the proposed scheduling mechanism is that it takes into account potentially different QoS requirements from different traffic flows. A number of interesting findings are observed from the results obtained by both analysis and simulation: (1) QoS requirements can be satisfied for both real-time and nonreal-time flows; (2) the impact Of the real-time traffic head-of-line (HoL) blocking on the system throughput can be effectively alleviated with the prevailing number of traffic flows. In addition, we investigate a variety of performance measures under different system configurations     

Multicast Broadcast Services Support in OFDMA-Based WiMAX Systems [Advances in Mobile Multimedia]

Multimedia stream service provided by broadband wireless networks has emerged as an important technology and has attracted much attention. An all-IP network architecture with reliable high-throughput air interface makes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA)-based mobile worldwide interoperability for microwave access (mobile WiMAX) a viable technology for wireless multimedia services, such as voice over IP (VoIP), mobile TV, and so on. One of the main features in a WiMAX MAC layer is that it can provide'differentiated services among different traffic categories with individual QoS requirements. In this article, we first give an overview of the key aspects of WiMAX and describe multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS) architecture of the 3GPP. Then, we propose a multicast and broadcast service (MBS) architecture for WiMAX that is based on MBMS. Moreover, we enhance the MBS architecture for mobile WiMAX to overcome the shortcoming of limited video broadcast performance over the baseline MBS model. We also give examples to demonstrate that the proposed architecture can support better mobility and offer higher power efficiency.     

Scheduling in IEEE 802.16e mobile WiMAX networks: key issues and a survey

Interest in broadband wireless access (BWA) has been growing due to increased user mobility and the need for data access at all times. IEEE 802.16e based WiMAX networks promise the best available quality of experience for mobile data service users. Unlike wireless LANs, WiMAX networks incorporate several quality of service (QoS) mechanisms at the Media Access Control (MAC) level for guaranteed services for data, voice and video. The problem of assuring QoS is basically that of how to allocate available resources among users in order to meet the QoS criteria such as delay, delay jitter and throughput requirements. IEEE standard does not include a standard scheduling mechanism and leaves it for implementer differentiation. Scheduling is, therefore, of special interest to all WiMAX equipment makers and service providers. This paper discusses the key issues and design factors to be considered for scheduler designers. In addition, we present an extensive survey of recent scheduling research. We classify the proposed mechanisms based on the use of channel conditions. The goals of scheduling are to achieve the optimal usage of resources, to assure the QoS guarantees, to maximize goodput and to minimize power consumption while ensuring feasible algorithm complexity and system scalability.     

Optimal network selection in heterogeneous wireless multimedia networks

The complementary characteristics of different wireless networks make it attractive to integrate a wide range of radio access technologies. Most of previous work on integrating heterogeneous wireless networks concentrates on network layer quality of service (QoS), such as blocking probability and utilization, as design criteria. However, from a user’s point of view, application layer QoS, such as multimedia distortion, is an important issue. In this paper, we propose an optimal distributed network selection scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks considering multimedia application layer QoS. Specifically, we formulate the integrated network as a restless bandit system. With this stochastic optimization formulation, the optimal network selection policy is indexable, meaning that the network with the lowest index should be selected. The proposed scheme can be applicable to both tight coupling and loose coupling scenarios in the integration of heterogeneous wireless networks. Simulation results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed scheme.     

5G mobile terminals with advanced QoS-based user-centric aggregation (AQUA) for heterogeneous wireless and mobile networks

In this paper we present an advanced QoS provisioning module with vertical multi-homing framework for future fifth generation (5G) mobile terminals with radio network aggregation capability and traffic load sharing in heterogeneous mobile and wireless environments. The proposed 5G mobile terminal framework is leading to high performance utility networks with high QoS provisioning for any given multimedia service, higher bandwidth utilization and multi-RAT capabilities. It is using vertical multi-homing and virtual QoS routing algorithms within the mobile terminal, that is able to handle simultaneously multiple radio network connections via multiple wireless and mobile network interfaces. Our 5G proposal is user-centric, targeted to always-on connectivity, maximal network utilization, maximal throughput, seamless handovers and performances improvement by using vertical multi-homing, as well as session continuity. The performance of our proposed mobile terminal framework for 5G is evaluated using simulations and analysis with multimedia traffic in heterogeneous mobile and wireless scenarios with coexistence of multiple radio access technologies, such as 3G, 4G as well as future 5G radio access networks.     

Performance study of mobile WiMAX network with changing scenarios under different modulation and coding

WiMAX—the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is a promising technology for offering high‐speed data, video and multimedia services over mobile platform evolving toward all IP networks. The increasing demand of WiMAX for VoIP and high‐speed multimedia is due to the simplicity of installation and cost reduction compared with the traditional wired DSL cable. The challenges to service providers lie with the Quality of Service (QoS) under varying fading environment while at the same time maximizing for resource utilization. In this paper, a rigorous and comprehensive performance study of mobile WiMAX has been made with respect to adaptive modulation and coding techniques considering the variation in the speed of the mobile, path‐loss, scheduling services and application type for comparing with the fixed type of modulations. The OPNET 14.5.A modeler for WiMAX platform has been used as simulator for adaptation at the physical layer of the transmission in WiMAX OFDMA structure. Observation reveals that dynamic adaptation of modulation and coding schemes based on channel condition enables better QoS while consuming low overall bandwidth of the system. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal Joint Session Admission Control in Integrated WLAN and CDMA Cellular Networks with Vertical Handoff

This paper considers optimizing the utilization of radio resources in a heterogeneous integrated system consisting of two different networks: a wireless local area network (WLAN) and a wideband code division multiple access (CDMA) network. We propose a joint session admission control scheme for multimedia traffic that maximizes overall network revenue with quality of service (QoS) constraints over both the WLAN and the CDMA cellular networks. The WLAN operates under the IEEE 802.11e medium access control (MAC) protocol, which supports QoS for multimedia traffic. A novel concept of effective bandwidth is used in the CDMA network to derive the unified radio resource usage, taking into account both physical layer linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) receivers and characteristics of the packet traffic. Numerical examples illustrate that the network revenue earned in the proposed joint admission control scheme is significantly larger than that when the individual networks are optimized independently with no vertical handoff between them. The revenue gain is also significant over the scheme in which vertical handoff is supported, but admission control is not done jointly. Furthermore, we show that the optimal joint admission control policy is a randomized policy, i.e., sessions are admitted to the system with probabilities in some states     

Power control and capacity analysis for a packetized indoormultimedia DS-CDMA network

This paper proposes a packetized indoor wireless system using direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) protocol. The indoor radio environment is characterized by slow Rayleigh fading with or without lognormal shadowing. The system supports multimedia services with various transmission rates and quality of service (QoS) requirements and allows for seamless interfacing to asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) broadband networks. All packets are transmitted with forward error correction (FEC) using convolutional code for voice packets and Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) code for data packets with an automatic retransmission request (ARQ) protocol and for video packets without ARQ. A queueing model is used for servicing data transmission requests. A power control algorithm is proposed for the system, which combines closed-loop power control with channel estimation to give the best performance. The cell capacity of each traffic type and various multimedia traffic configurations in both single-cell and multiple-cell networks are evaluated theoretically under the assumption of perfect power control. The effect of power control imperfection on the capacity using the proposed power control algorithm is investigated by computer simulation     

Improved priority access, bandwidth allocation and traffic scheduling for DOCSIS cable networks

The Data Over Cable Service Interface Specifications (DOCSIS) is intended to support IP flows over HFC (hybrid fiber/coax) networks with significantly higher data rates than analog modems and Integrated Service Digital Network (ISDN) links for high quality audio, video and interactive services. To support quality-of-service (QoS) for such applications, it is important for HFC networks to provide effective media access and traffic scheduling mechanisms. In this paper, we first present a multilevel priority collision resolution scheme with adaptive contention window adjustment. The proposed collision resolution scheme separates and resolves collisions for different traffic priority classes (such as delay-sensitive and best effort streams), thus achieving the capability for preemptive priorities. Second, a novel MAC (media access control) scheduling mechanism and a new bandwidth allocation scheme are proposed to support multimedia traffic over DOCSIS-compliant cable networks. It is shown through simulation results that throughput and delay performance have been improved for the transmission of real-time VBR (variable bit rate) traffic as compared to current DOCSIS specifications.     

A Cross-Layer Packet Scheduling Scheme for Multimedia Broadcasting via Satellite Digital Multimedia Broadcasting System [Advances in Mobile Multimedia]

In recent years, multimedia content broadcasting via satellite has attracted increased attention. The satellite digital multimedia broadcasting (S-DMB) system has emerged as one of the most promising alternatives for the efficient delivery of multimedia broadcast multicast service (MBMS). The design of an efficient radio resource management (RRM) strategy, especially the packet scheduling scheme, becomes a key technique for provisioning multimedia services at required quality of service (QoS) in S-DMB. In this article, we propose a novel cross-layer packet scheduling scheme that consists of a combined delay and rate differentiation (CDRD) service prioritization algorithm and a dynamic rate matching (DRM)-based resource allocation algorithm. The proposed scheme considers multiple key factors that span from the application layer to the physical layer, aiming at simultaneously guaranteeing diverse QoS while utilizing radio resources efficiently under the system power and resource constraints. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed cross-layer scheme achieves significantly better performance than existing schemes in queuing delay, jitter, and channel utilization.     

Channel-Aware Scheduling for QoS and Fairness Provisioning in IEEE 802.16/WiMAX Broadband Wireless Access Systems

In the last few years, standardization activities within the IEEE 802.16 Working Group have resulted in the publication of specifications for an air interface of Fixed broadband wireless access systems. WiMAX is the commercial name of products compliant with the approved IEEE 802.16 standard. Although the standard suggests the main principles in designing a QoS architecture to support multimedia broadband services, implementation details are left to manufacturers. This article addresses a channel-aware scheduling algorithm conceived for a point-to-multipoint WiMAX architecture. It aims at enabling downlink traffic delivery with differentiated service treatment, even in nonideal channel conditions. A technique to compensate for channel errors is proposed to preserve QoS and fairness of a WF2Q+ based scheduling algorithm. The performance behavior of the proposed algorithm is confirmed by the outputs of a comprehensive simulation campaign.