Analytical Modelling and Message Delay Performance Evaluation of the IEEE 802.16 MAC Protocol

The IEEE 802.16 is a well known set of standards, which have been developed for global deployment of Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) in order to provide broadband wireless accesses supporting the integrated transmission of multimedia applications with different Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. In order to achieve the QoS requirements of multimedia applications, the IEEE 802.16 standards offers different scheduling schemes. This paper is concerned with the analytical modelling of the MAC protocol and the analysis of average message delays for real and non-real time traffics in broadband access wireless networks operating under the IEEE 802.16 standard. The message delays results obtained are presented for two scenarios, as a function of the load generated for different types of traffic. In addition, the impact on the network performance caused by some of the parameters utilized as part of the random access mechanism is also investigated. The results obtained through the use of the analytical model proposed in this paper are compared with those obtained with the aid of a simulation tool. The agreement of comparisons involving analytical and simulation results in the examples studied show that the model proposed in this paper could be very useful when utilized to represent and study further behavior characteristics of the end-to-end message delays involved in IEEE 802.16 standard MAC protocol under consideration.