Modelling quality of service in IEEE 802.16 networks

While only relatively recently standardized, IEEE 802.16 orWiMAX networks are receiving a great deal of attention in both industry and research. This is so because with the increased emphasis on multimedia data, apart from the general advantage of wireless, 802.16 promises wider bandwidth and QoS as part of the standard. As a back haul network for other networks, in particular the 802.11a/b/g/e or WiFi networks, it is well suited. As for any new technology, there are many open questions of which Transmission Scheduling and Connection Admission Control (CAC) are the most prominent. The standard intentionally makes no statement about either function. Different from other performance models we have seen, we consider an analytical framework which takes into account the close relationship between the CAC algorithms and the Scheduler algorithms and is applicable to each mode of operation and admission control paradigm specified by the standard. The long term objective of this work is to present a hybrid analytic and simulation model, based on the proposed framework, for modelling QoS metrics in 802.16 networks.