Efficiency-driven selection of bandwidth request mechanism in broadband wireless access networks

To avoid collisions in WiMAX networks, the connections in Subscriber Stations (SSs) use a request-grant process to acquire transmission resources from the Base Station (BS). In accordance with the IEEE 802.16 standard, the request-grant process is accomplished using either a unicast polling method or a contention request method. In WiMAX systems, the number of bandwidth-request (BR) slots per frame is limited. Thus, to enhance the network performance, the BR slots must be used in the most efficient manner possible. In practical WiMAX systems, the offered network load varies over time, and thus the strict use of either the unicast polling method or the contention request method results in a poor utilization efficiency of the BR slots. Accordingly, the present study proposes a scheme designated as Efficiency-Driven Selection of Bandwidth Request (EDSBR), in which the request-grant mechanism is adjusted dynamically on a frame-by-frame basis in accordance with the network conditions. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated by simulations. The results show that EDSBR achieves a more efficient utilization of the BR slots than the unicast polling scheme or the contention request scheme, and therefore yields an improved network performance.