Max-Min Fair Scheduling in OFDMA-Based Multi-Hop WiMAX Mesh Networks

The emerging WiMAX technology (IEEE 802.16) is a fourth generation standard for low-cost, high-speed and long range wireless communications for a large variety of civilian and military applications. IEEE 802.16j has introduced the concept of mesh network model and a special type of node called Relay Station (RS) for traffic relay for Subscriber Stations (SSs). A WiMAX mesh network is able to provide larger wireless coverage, higher network capacity and Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) communications. This paper studies a Multi-hop FAir Scheduling for Throughput Optimization (MFASTO) problem in WiMAX mesh networks. The goal here is to maximize the minimum satisfaction ratio among all the SSs. In order to solve the MFASTO problem, an ILP formulation and an efficient heuristic algorithm are proposed in this work. Simulation results are presented to justify the performance and efficiency of our proposed solutions.