QoS Differentiation for IEEE 802.16 WiMAX Mesh Networking

摘要

Recently IEEE 802.16 WiMAX has attracted a lot of attention in wireless networking research and applications. To enable a flexible and cost-effective deployment, mesh networking mode is denned in WiMAX standard. In this paper, we introduce a system model of WiMAX mesh networking with the focus on entry process, frame structure, centralized and distributed scheduling. The state-of-the-art WiMAX mesh networking research is reviewed. In addition, we propose an effective QoS differentiation scheme for the IEEE 802.16 WiMAX mesh networks. Both collocated scenario and general topology are theoretically analyzed and compared. Illustrative numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The impact of key parameters on the performance is discussed for differentiating multiple classes of services. Several open issues are summarized as a guideline for future topics in WiMAX mesh networking research.