A Packet Scheduling Scheme for Enhanced QoS in WiMAX

WiMAX is one of the most promising broadband wireless technologies today. The WiMAX standard IEEE 802.16 is designed to provide Quality of Service (QoS) to delay—sensitive traffic like video and voice. However, the standard does not specify any particular scheduling algorithm to achieve the above objective. This paper proposes a novel packet scheduling scheme for providing QoS to downlink traffic i.e. traffic transmission from the base station (BS) to the subscriber stations (SS) in WiMAX. The primary objective in designing the scheduling scheme is to provide each traffic type with appropriate resources such that it meets its average packet delay and average packet loss criteria. Extensive simulations have been performed to test our scheduling algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that our scheduling scheme minimizes the packet loss and almost always meets the average packet delay constraint even in a heavily loaded network.