Maximum rectangle-based down-link burst allocation algorithm for WiMAX systems

The IEEE 802.16e standard known as Mobile WiMAX has recently been introduced. Because of the high data throughput and low cost of deployment, it becomes one of the leading solutions for wireless broadband services. Mobile WiMAX makes use of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) digital modulation scheme as the transmission method. The standard specifies that a data burst in the downlink subframe needs to be mapped into a time and frequency domain with a rectangular shape, but how the data bursts are organized to minimize the wasted space is not detailed. Many burst mapping algorithms have been proposed by researchers in these late years. This paper presents an efficient packing algorithm which achieves high throughput, reduces the number of unused slots, and minimizes the mapping information overhead. We compare the performance of our proposed algorithm with that of eOCSA, a high-performance packing algorithm recently presented by other researchers. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm outperforms eOCSA.