Delay constrained uplink scheduling policy for rtPS/ertPS service in IEEE 802.16e BWA systems

WiMAX is a promising broadband wireless networking technology and is expected to take the place of broadband access solutions such as DSL and cable. Owing to its superior support in mobility, it is expected to provide integrated voice and data service to realize broadband mobile computing. In order to reach better quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements for real‐time applications, the IEEE 802.16e standard defines five different services among traffic categories with different multimedia requirements. However, the problem of choosing the right set of medium access control parameters and packet scheduling policy to provide strict QoS guaranteed in IEEE 802.16e Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) systems remains unsolved and left as an open issue. In this paper, we propose a novel polling‐based uplink packet scheduling policy for real‐time Polling Service and extended real‐time Polling Service (rtPS/ertPS) traffic to support real‐time applications, with strict delay requirements, such as variable bit rate (VBR) traffic in IEEE 802.16e BWA systems. The proposed transmit‐permission policy can derive sufficient conditions such that all the rtPS/ertPS sources satisfy their time constraints to provide deterministic QoS guarantees. In addition to theoretical analysis, simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme. As it turns out, our design provides a good quality performance in the IEEE 802.16e BWA systems. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.