WIMAX LINK PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS FOR WIRELESS AUTOMATION APPLICATIONS

Wireless broadband access technologies are rapidly growing and a corresponding growth in the demand of its applicability transcends faster internet access, high speed file download and different multimedia applications such as voice calls, video streaming, teleconferencing etc, to industrial operations and automation. Industrial and automation systems perform operations that requires the transmission of real time information from one end to another through high-performance wireless broadband communication links. WiMAX, based on IEEE 802.16 standard is one of the wireless broadband access technologies that has overcome location, speed, and access limitations of the traditional Digital Subscriber Line and Wireless Fidelity, and offers high efficient data rates. This thesis presents detailed analysis of operational WiMAX link performance parameters such as throughput, latency, jitter, and packet loss for suitable applicability in wireless automation applications. The theoretical background of components and functionalities of WiMAX physical and MAC layers as well as the network performance features are presented. The equipment deployed for this field experiment are Alvarion BreeZeMAX 3000 fixed WiMAX equipment operating in the 3.5 GHz licensed band with channel bandwidth of 3.5 MHz. The deployed equipment consisting of MBSE and CPE are installed and commissioned prior to field tests. Several measurements are made in three link quality scenarios (sufficient, good and excellent) in the University of Vaasa campus. Observations and results obtained are discussed and analyzed.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Design of interface selection protocols for multi-homed wireless networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University on 10 December 2010.The IEEE 802.11/802.16 standards conformant wireless communication stations have multi-homing transmission capability. To achieve greater communication efficiency, multi-homing capable stations use handover mechanism to select appropriate transmission channel according to variations in the channel quality. This thesis presents three internal-linked handover schemes, (1) Interface Selection Protocol (ISP), belonging to Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)- Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) environment (2) Fast Channel Scanning (FCS) and (3) Traffic Manager (TM), (2) and (3) belonging to WiMAX Environment. The proposed schemes in this thesis use a novel mechanism of providing a reliable communication route. This solution is based on a cross-layer communication framework, where the interface selection module uses various network related parameters from Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer/Physical Layer (PHY) across the protocol suite for decision making at the Network layer. The proposed solutions are highly responsive when compared with existing multi-homed schemes; responsiveness is one of the key factors in the design of such protocols. Selected route under these schemes is based on the most up to date link-layer information. Therefore, such a route is not only reliable in terms of route optimization but it also fulfils the application demands in terms of throughput and delay. Design of ISP protocol use probing frames during the route discovery process. The 802.11 mandates the use of different rates for data transmission frames. The ISP-metric can be incorporated into various routing aspects and its applicability is determined by the possibility of provision of MAC dependent parameters that are used to determine the best path metric values. In many cases, higher device density, interference and mobility cause variable medium access delays. It causes creation of ‘unreachable zones’, where destination is marked as unreachable. However, by use of the best path metric, the destination has been made reachable, anytime and anywhere, because of the intelligent use of the probing frames and interface selection algorithm implemented. The IEEE 802.16e introduces several MAC level queues for different access categories, maintaining service requirement within these queues; which imply that frames from a higher priority queue, i.e. video frames, are serviced more frequently than those belonging to lower priority queues. Such an enhancement at the MAC sub-layer introduces uneven queuing delays. Conventional routing protocols are unaware of such MAC specific constraints and as a result, these factors are not considered which result in channel performance degradation. To meet such challenges, the thesis presents FCS and TM schemes for WiMAX. For FCS, Its solution is to improve the mobile WiMAX handover and address the scanning latency. Since minimum scanning time is the most important issue in the handover process. This handover scheme aims to utilize the channel efficiently and apply such a procedure to reduce the time it takes to scan the neighboring access stations. TM uses MAC and physical layer (PHY) specific information in the interface metric and maintains a separate path to destination by applying an alternative interface operation. Simulation tests and comparisons with existing multi-homed protocols and handover schemes demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating the medium dependent parameters. Moreover, show that suggested schemes, have shown better performance in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput, with efficiency up to 40% in specific test scenarios

Enhancing Scheduling for IEEE 802.16 Networks

The IEEE 802.16 standard defines the specifications of the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology as a Broadband Wireless Access network. This type of networks supports multiservice traffic (data, voice and video) and guarantees the Quality of Service at the MAC layer level. However, the IEEE 802.16 standard specifies three QoS components that reside in the MAC layer such as scheduler and call admission control. Although, the IEEE 802.16 defined the function of each component but left the implementation open for vendors and operators. In this thesis, we aim to design two new scheduling algorithms that guarantee QoS in WiMAX network. The new algorithms will consider application traffic requirements, channel condition states and compliant with the standard. The first algorithm is Deadline maximum Signal to Interference Ratio (DmSIR) scheduling algorithm and it is a modified version from maximum Signal to Interference Ratio (mSIR) scheduling algorithm. The DmSIR scheduling algorithm makes scheduling decision based on two factors: the packets deadline and signal to noise ratio. The second algorithm which we named the Priority based Deficit Round Robin (PbDRR) solves the problem of long delay for non real-time traffic with low signal to noise ratio as well as giving priority to real-time traffic that approach to deadline. The PbDRR scheduling algorithm makes scheduling decision based on three factors: packets deadline, signal to noise ratio and backlog traffic. We used the NS2 network simulation to evaluate the performance of the new algorithms and three performance metrics are evaluated for this purpose. The simulation results for DmSIR shows enhancement in the performance compared to the mSIR scheduling algorithm but the non real-time traffic with low signal to noise ratio suffers from long delay. On the other hand, the simulation results for the PbDRR scheduling algorithm shows better performance than the DmSIR and Deficit Round Robin + Fragmentation (DRR+F) scheduling algorithms

Design of interface selection protocols for multi-homed wireless networks

The IEEE 802.11/802.16 standards conformant wireless communication stations have multi-homing transmission capability. To achieve greater communication efficiency, multi-homing capable stations use handover mechanism to select appropriate transmission channel according to variations in the channel quality. This thesis presents three internal-linked handover schemes, (1) Interface Selection Protocol (ISP), belonging to Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)- Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) environment (2) Fast Channel Scanning (FCS) and (3) Traffic Manager (TM), (2) and (3) belonging to WiMAX Environment. The proposed schemes in this thesis use a novel mechanism of providing a reliable communication route. This solution is based on a cross-layer communication framework, where the interface selection module uses various network related parameters from Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer/Physical Layer (PHY) across the protocol suite for decision making at the Network layer. The proposed solutions are highly responsive when compared with existing multi-homed schemes; responsiveness is one of the key factors in the design of such protocols. Selected route under these schemes is based on the most up to date link-layer information. Therefore, such a route is not only reliable in terms of route optimization but it also fulfils the application demands in terms of throughput and delay. Design of ISP protocol use probing frames during the route discovery process. The 802.11 mandates the use of different rates for data transmission frames. The ISP-metric can be incorporated into various routing aspects and its applicability is determined by the possibility of provision of MAC dependent parameters that are used to determine the best path metric values. In many cases, higher device density, interference and mobility cause variable medium access delays. It causes creation of ‘unreachable zones’, where destination is marked as unreachable. However, by use of the best path metric, the destination has been made reachable, anytime and anywhere, because of the intelligent use of the probing frames and interface selection algorithm implemented. The IEEE 802.16e introduces several MAC level queues for different access categories, maintaining service requirement within these queues; which imply that frames from a higher priority queue, i.e. video frames, are serviced more frequently than those belonging to lower priority queues. Such an enhancement at the MAC sub-layer introduces uneven queuing delays. Conventional routing protocols are unaware of such MAC specific constraints and as a result, these factors are not considered which result in channel performance degradation. To meet such challenges, the thesis presents FCS and TM schemes for WiMAX. For FCS, Its solution is to improve the mobile WiMAX handover and address the scanning latency. Since minimum scanning time is the most important issue in the handover process. This handover scheme aims to utilize the channel efficiently and apply such a procedure to reduce the time it takes to scan the neighboring access stations. TM uses MAC and physical layer (PHY) specific information in the interface metric and maintains a separate path to destination by applying an alternative interface operation. Simulation tests and comparisons with existing multi-homed protocols and handover schemes demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating the medium dependent parameters. Moreover, show that suggested schemes, have shown better performance in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput, with efficiency up to 40% in specific test scenarios.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Investigation of efficient resource allocation schemes for WiMAX networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University on 9 July 2008.WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a promising wireless technology with the aim of providing the last mile wireless broadband access designed for both fixed and mobile consumers as an alternative solution to the wired DSL and cable access schemes. The purpose of this research project is to investigate efficient resource allocation algorithms for WiMax. To achieve this goal, we investigate efficient PHY layer Partial Usage of SubCarriers (PUSC) allocation as well as MAC layer piggyback bandwidth request mechanisms. At the PHY layer we proposed improvements on the Uplink and Downlink PUSC subcarrier allocation scheme. For the Uplink PUSC we suggested a method by allocating different frequencies to neighbouring cells in combination with the Integer Frequency Reuse (IFR) and Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) in order to reduce interferences and collisions. The simulation results exhibit that collision rates can be reduced to zero for both IFR and FFR patterns with the proposed improvement by assuming that perfect power control is used in the system. In addition, there is no collision at cell edges. The results also show that FFR patterns achieve lower inter-cell interference and higher capacities as compared to the IFR patterns. For the Downlink PUSC we introduced an offset scheme with the purpose of increasing the number of users in the system. At the MAC layer we propose an improvement on the piggyback bandwidth request mechanism by increasing the size of the piggyback bandwidth request in order to reduce the number of bandwidth requests and hence improve the resource utilisation. The simulation results demonstrate that our improved scheme achieves higher throughput, less delay and packet loss rates as compared to the standardised piggyback bandwidth request mechanism

Uplink scheduling algorithms for the rtPS traffic class for IEEE 80216 networks

Ankara : The Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and the Institute of Engineering and Sciences of Bilkent University, 2008.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2008.Includes bibliographical references leaves 83-86.IEEE 802.16 MAC provides extensive bandwidth allocation and QoS mechanisms for various types of applications. However, the scheduling mechanisms for the uplink and downlink are unspecified by the IEEE 802.16 standard and are thus left open for vendors’ own implementations. Ensuring QoS requirements at the MAC level for different users with different QoS requirements and traffic profiles is also another challenging problem in the area. The standard defines five different scheduling services one of them being the real-time Polling Service (rtPS). In this thesis, we propose an uplink scheduler to be implemented on the WiMAX Base Station (BS) for rtPS type connections. We propose that the base station maintains a leaky bucket for each rtPS connection to police and schedule rtPS traffic for uplink traffic management. There are two scheduling algorithms defined in this study: one is based on a simpler round robin scheme using leaky buckets for QoS management, whereas the other one uses again leaky buckets for QoS management but also a proportional fair scheme for potential throughput improvement in case of varying channel conditions. The proposed two schedulers are studied via simulations using MATLAB to demonstrate their performance in terms of throughput, fairness and delay. We show that the leaky bucket based scheduler ensures the QoS commitments of each user in terms of a minimum bandwidth guarantee whereas the proportional fair algorithm is shown to opportunistically take advantage of varying channel conditions.Ertürk, Mustafa CenkM.S