Service oriented networking for multimedia applications in broadband wireless networks

Extensive efforts have been focused on deploying broadband wireless networks. Providing mobile users with high speed network connectivity will let them run various multimedia applications on their wireless devices. In order to successfully deploy and operate broadband wireless networks, it is crucial to design efficient methods for supporting various services and applications in broadband wireless networks. Moreover, the existing access-oriented networking solutions are not able to fully address all the issues of supporting various applications with different quality of service requirements. Thus, service-oriented networking has been recently proposed and has gained much attention. This dissertation discusses the challenges and possible solutions for supporting multimedia applications in broadband wireless networks. The service requirements of different multimedia applications such as video streaming and Voice over IP (VoIP) are studied and some novel service-oriented networking solutions for supporting these applications in broadband wireless networks are proposed. The performance of these solutions is examined in WiMAX networks which are the promising technology for broadband wireless access in the near future. WiMAX networks are based on the IEEE 802.16 standards which have defined different Quality of Service (QoS) classes to support a broad range of applications with varying service requirements to mobile and stationary users. The growth of multimedia traffic that requires special quality of service from the network will impose new constraints on network designers who should wisely allocate the limited resources to users based on their required quality of service. An efficient resource management and network design depends upon gaining accurate information about the traffic profile of user applications. In this dissertation, the access level traffic profile of VoIP applications are studied first, and then a realistic distribution model for VoIP traffic is proposed. Based on this model, an algorithm to allocate resources for VoIP applications in WiMAX networks is investigated. Later, the challenges and possible solutions for transmitting MPEG video streams in wireless networks are discussed. The MPEG traffic model adopted by the WiMAX Forum is introduced and different application-oriented solutions for enhancing the performance of wireless networks with respect to MPEG video streaming applications are explained. An analytical framework to verify the performance of the proposed solutions is discoursed, and it is shown that the proposed solutions will improve the efficiency of VoIP applications and the quality of streaming applications over wireless networks. Finally, conclusions are drawn and future works are discussed

Bandwidth and Power Management in Broadband Wireless Networks

Bandwidth and power are considered as two important resources in wireless networks. Therefore, how to management these resources becomes a critical issue. In this thesis, we investigate this issue majorally in IEEE 802.16 networks. We first perform performance analysis on two bandwidth request mechanisms defined in IEEE 802.16 networks. We also propose two practical performance objectives. Based on the analysis, we design two scheduling algorithm to achieve the objectives. Due to the characteristics of popular variable bit rate (VBR) traffic, it is very difficult for subscriber stations (SSs) to make appropriate bandwidth reservation. Therefore, the bandwidth may not be utilized all the time. We propose a new protocol, named bandwidth recycling, to utilized unused bandwidth. Our simulation shows that the proposed scheme can improve system utilization averagely by 40\%. We also propose a more aggressive solution to reduce the gap between bandwidth reservation and real usage. We first design a centralized approach by linear programming to obtain the optimal solution. Further, we design a fully distributed scheme based on game theory, named bandwidth reservation (BR) game. Due to different quality of service (QoS) requirements, we customize the utility function for each scheduling class. Our numerical and simulation show that the gap between BR game and optimal solution is limited. Due to the advantage of dynamical fractional frequency reuse (DFFR), the base station (BS) can dynamically adjust transmission power on each frequency partition. We emphasis on power allocation issue in DFFR to achieve most ecomicical data transmission. We first formulate the problem by integer linear programming (ILP). Due to high computation complexity, we further design a greedy algorithm. Our simulation shows that the results of the greedy algorithm is very close to the ILP results

Traffic Scheduling in Point-to-Multipoint OFDMA-based Systems

The new generation of wireless networks (e.g., WiMAX, LTE-Advanced, Cognitive Radio) support many high resource-consuming services (e.g., VoIP, video conference, multiplayer interactive gaming, multimedia streaming, digital video broadcasting, mobile commerce). The main problem of such networks is that the bandwidth is limited, besides to be subject to fading process, and shared among multiple users. Therefore, a combination of sophisticated transmission techniques (e.g., OFDMA) and proper packet scheduling algorithms is necessary, in order to provide applications with suitable quality of service. This Thesis addresses the problem of traffic scheduling in Point-to-Multipoint OFDMA-based systems. We formally prove that in such systems, even a simple scheduling problem of a Service Class at a time, is NP-complete, therefore, computationally intractable. An optimal solution is unfeasible in term of time, thus, fast and simple scheduling heuristics are needed. First, we address the Best Effort traffic scheduling issue, in a system adopting variable-length Frames, with the objective of producing a legal schedule (i.e., the one meeting all system constraints) of minimum length. Besides, we present fast and simple heuristics, which generate suboptimal solutions, and evaluate their performance in the average case, as in the worst one. Then, we investigate the scheduling of Real Time traffic, with the objective of meeting as many deadlines as possible, or equivalently, minimizing the packet drop ratio. Specifically, we propose two scheduling heuristics, which apply two different resource allocation mechanisms, and evaluate their average-case performance by means of a simulation experiment

An improved resource allocation scheme for WiMAX using channel information

In recent years, tremendous progress has been made in wireless communication systems to provide wireless coverage to end users at different data rates. WiMAX technology provides wireless broadband access over an extended coverage area in both fixed and mobility environments. Most of the existing resource allocation schemes allocate resources based on respective service class of the incoming users’ requests. However, due to variation in channel conditions, user mobility and diverse resource requirements QoS based resource allocation either results in over or under utilization of allocated resources. Therefore, resource allocation is a challenging task in WiMAX. This research proposes an improved resource management mechanism that performs resource allocation by taking into consideration not only the user service class but also the respective channel status. Based on these two parameters, this research aims to achieve improved resource allocation in terms of resource utilization, fairness and network throughput. First, a Channel Based Resource Allocation scheme is introduced where priority in resource allocation is given to users’ requests with relatively higher service classes and better channel status. To maintain fairness in resource allocation process, a Fair Resource Allocation Based Service mechanism is developed where priority is given to users’ requests having less additional resources demand. Finally, to improve throughput of the network, a Channel Based Throughput Improvement approach is proposed which dynamically selects a threshold level of channel gain based on individual channel gain of users. During resource allocation process, users above the threshold level are selected for resource allocation such that priority is given to users with high channel gain. Different simulation scenario results reveal an overall improved resource utilization from 87% to 91% and the throughput improves up to 15% when compared to existing schemes. In conclusion the performance of resource utilization is improved if channel status is considered as an input parameter

Fair Scheduling in OFDMA-based Wireless Systems with QoS Constraints

In this work we consider the problem of downlink resource allocation for proportional fairness of long term received rates of data users and quality of service for real time sessions in an OFDMA-based wireless system. The base station allocates available power and bandwidth to individual users based on long term average received rates, QoS based rate constraints and channel conditions. We solve the underlying constrained optimization problem and propose an algorithm that achieves the optimal allocation. Numerical evaluation results show that the proposed algorithm provides better QoS to voice and video sessions while providing more and fair rates to data users in comparison with existing schemes.Comment: Presented at International OFDM Workshop, Hamburg Germany on Aug. 30th 2007 (Inowo 07