Performance Evaluation of QoS for WiMAX Mesh Networks using Centralized Scheduling Algorithm

Among the recent upcoming air interface technologies which promise to deliver high transmission data rates, BWA systems become an attractive solution. One such BWA technology is the WiMAX technology or IEEE 802.16 standard which provides wireless solutions to remote areas. For both service provider and potential customers, it is necessary to know its basic capabilities, such as the number of supported subscriber per BS or transferred data rate that may be delivered. This paper is aimed at providing algorithms for centralized scheduling of real and non-real time traffic with the objective of providing QoS within the framework of the IEEE 802.16 mesh mode. Performance analysis is done for QoS improvement for various types of services like unsolicited grant service(UGS), real time polling service(rtPS) and best effort (BE) service. The scheduling algorithms used were Round Robin, Weighted Round Robin and mSIR. The various network characteristics viz throughput, delay and average throughput for different modulation techniques are performed. It is concluded that the throughput for rtPS is relatively high and delay is minimum among other services. Among different scheduling schemes, mSIR algorithm provided better performance for the cyclic prefix value of 0.125. In addition to the network parameters analysis, energy model is also considered and the energy consumption per node is analyzed with respect to the received packets.