A new distributed uplink packet scheduling algorithm in WiMAX newtorks

Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is designed to support a wide range of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements for different applications. Unlike the single service networks, a priority based mechanism is needed for specifying the transmission order of packets belonging to different traffic sources according to their QoS characteristics, which is called packet scheduling. In WiMAX standard, packet scheduling algorithm is not defined and its design is left for researchers. In this work, we propose a distributed uplink packet scheduling algorithm. In the proposed algorithm, when uplink capacity cannot satisfy the required resource of connections, according to traffic characteristics of the connection and their QoS requirement, the traffic of one or some user terminals from user terminals in the overlapping cells are selected for transferring to the neighboring under-loaded cells. The simulation results show that, the proposed algorithm increases the overall throughput of the network.