Frame aggregation-based power-saving scheduling algorithm for broadband wireless networks

The limitation on the battery lifetime has been a critical issue for the advancement of mobile computing. Different types of power-saving techniques have been proposed in various fields. In order to provide feasible energy-conserving mechanisms for the mobile subscriber stations (MSSs), three power-saving types have been proposed for the IEEE 802.16e broadband wireless networks. However, these power-saving types are primarily targeting for the cases with a single connection between the base station (BS) and the MSS. With the existence of multiple connections, the power efficiency obtained by adopting the conventional scheduling algorithm can be severely degraded. In this paper, with the consideration of the multiple connections and their quality-of-service (QoS) constraints, a frame aggregation-based power-saving scheduling (FAPS) algorithm is proposed to enhance the power efficiency by aggregating multiple underutilized frames into fully-utilized ones. The performance evaluation is conducted and compared via the simulations. Simulation results show that the sleep frame ratio (i.e., a power efficiency metric) of the proposed FAPS algorithm outperforms the baseline protocols with tolerable delay.