Adaptive Polling Service for Next-Generation IEEE 802.16 WiMAX Networks

WiMAX technology, based on IEEE 802.16 standard, is a promising broadband wireless technology for future 4G network. WiMAX provides radio access with centralized control, where bandwidth resources are managed and allocated by base station (BS) for both uplink (UL) and downlink (DL). Current WiMAX standard defines several bandwidth request (BWReq) mechanisms to serve a variety of applications, which however may not be efficient for on-off bursty traffic patterns. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptive polling service (aPS), with the advantage of significantly reducing the signaling overhead associated with the bandwidth request process without compromising the delay performance of real-time applications. Extensive simulations demonstrate that aPS outperforms existing scheduling services in terms of overall efficiency for a wide range of applications.