Performance Analysis of uplink resource allocation in
WIMAX
Oana Iosif, Elena-Roxana Cirstea, Ion Banica, Silviu Ciochina
Electrical Engineering and Telecommunication
‘Politehnica’University of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
Abstract — This paper presents the key design factors that
must be taken into account when developing resource
allocation algorithms. IEEE 802.16e standard does not include
a scheduling algorithm for the uplink direction and it remains
open for research and continuous improvement. Using
OPNET, we investigate different factors that impact the UL
resource allocation in WIMAX. Based on one of our previous
papers developed in QualNet concerning the UL scheduling in
WIMAX, a comparison between QualNet and OPNET will be
done.
Keywords components - resource allocation; scheduling
algorithms,; bandwidth; throughput; delay; jitter
I. INTRODUCTION
Even if we speak about advantages or costs, IEEE 802.16
WIMAX is a leading wireless technology and a good
alternative to other wide band technologies, wired networks
or even cellular networks. One of its design purposes was to
accommodate various QoS requirements. Due to the fact that
certain applications can not work well without QoS (e.g. a
given delay can be accepted by an application but it can
become critical for another) WIMAX model must be flexible
and efficient in offering quality data and voice transfers.
Like other wireless standards, in WIMAX, all the
available bandwidth is shared between users located in the
same radio sector. Considering this, performance could
deteriorate in case of an increased number of users. To
overcome this issue and deliver the QoS required by an
application, the best suited scheduling algorithm must be
chosen and then it must be optimized.
II. RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN WIMAX
What makes IEEE 802.16 so attractive is the possibility
to handle the QoS over the radio interface. The Physical
Layer and the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer have a
special design to be able to manage different kinds of traffic.
The connection-oriented nature of the MAC layer (traffic is
mapped to a Connection Identifier - CID) affords the use of
scheduling and connection admission control algorithms.
For a better dimensioning of the QoS needs of an
application, IEEE 802.16e standard defines five QoS service
classes: UGS (Unsolicited Grant Service), ertPS (Enhanced
Real Time Polling Service), rtPS (Real Time Polling
978-1-4244-6363-3/10/$26.00
2010
c IEEE
Service), nrtPS (Non-real Time Polling Services), BE (Best
Effort).
UGS receives the needed bandwidth at connection setup
and there is no need to send another bandwidth request. Its
QoS requirements are: maximum sustained rate, maximum
latency and jitter. ErtPS is used for voice with silence
suppression and no bandwidth is allocated during the silent
periods. This service class reduces MAC overhead and
access delay of the rtPS algorithm and decreases the wasted
resources of the UGS service class. For rtPS , the bandwidth
requirements vary and the BS (Base Station) must be able to
regularly poll the SSs (Subscriber Station). To provide
efficient service for non-real time traffic WIMAX defines
nrtPS. The only guarantee it offers is the minimum reserved
rate. Last but not least is BE service class. Most of data
traffic in WIMAX is included in this category. There is no
guarantee for throughput or delay and the remaining
bandwidth is available for BE services only after all other
service classes have been scheduled.
Based on the bandwidth request issued by a MS, the BS
decides the number of slots it can allocate to each MS in
each UL frame. The newest standard recommendations allow
the BS to allocate grants only per subscriber station (GPSS)
and the MS scheduler must be able to distribute resources
between its connections. Bandwidth request can be
incremental or aggregate and implicit or explicit based on its
need of polling. IEEE 802.16e standard specifies seven
different bandwidth request mechanisms:
 Unsolicited request – periodical allocation at setup
stage for UGS or ertPS flows
 Poll-me bit – non-UGS connections asks the BS to
poll them
 Bandwidth stealing – nrtPS or BE service classes
can send a short bandwidth request (6 bytes)
 Piggybacking – every non-UGS flow can send a
bandwidth request over any other MAC packets
being sent to the BS (Grant management Subheader
– 2bytes)
 Contention region – ertPS, nrtPS or BE flows can
use the adjustable contention period to send
bandwidth requests
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  Codeword over CQICH – ertPS connections can
specify a codeword over CQICH to request the
change of the grant size
 CDMA code based – nrtPS and BE can use a
reserved code to send its bandwidth request
III. SIMULATED SCENARIOS
For our developed scenarios we used IEEE 802.16e FDD
mode at 2.3 GHz with channel bandwidth of 10Mhz and a
frame duration of 5ms. The physical layer is OFDMA based.
In the uplink direction the subchannelization scheme is
PUSC (Partial Usage of Subcarriers). Subchannels formed
using this distributed scheme is better suited for mobile
applications because a mobile user can take advantage of
frequency diversity. The UL/DL boundary position is fixed
in the WIMAX model developed in OPNET and it can not
be modified. The total number of available symbols is
equally shared between the UL and DL subframe.
One of the minuses regarding the OPNET WIMAX
model is the lack of support for multiple UL and DL zones.
A zone extends vertically across the entire width of the frame
in frequency, and extends horizontally for a duration equal to
the number of symbols implied by the percentage setting in
an attribute that must be defined during the simulation. The
defined attribute determines the length of the zone in time.
For instance, 100% for a zone of type UL means the zone
extends over the entire uplink. In Opnet this percentage can
not be changed.
The UL scheduling algorithm, as stated in [1], [2] defines
four traffic priorities. First, UGS and ertPS traffic flows are
scheduled then, the critical signaling messages. Periodic data
grants are provided to UGS and ertPS service classes. Data
grants assigned to UGS flows is fixed but, for ertPS it can
change. The third priority traffic is rtPS, nrtPS flows and the
MDRR scheduler distributes the resources between these two
service classes. BE traffic flow has the fourth priority and it
is scheduled using Weighted Round Robin.
Figure 1. UL scheduling in OPNET
For the Weighted Round Robin Algorithm, each queue
has an assigned weight. The queue with the highest weight
is allowed to send first a number of packets proportional to
its weight. Modified Deficit Round Robin (MDRR)
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algorithm uses a credit value attributed to each queue. It is
based on a very simple mechanism: as long as the queue
credit value is greater than zero, packets are being extracted
from that queue.
A. Best effort service flows
One of the most common traffic type is BE. This service
flow does not have any specific delay or bandwidth
requirements as it has the lowest priority. The bandwidth
request-grant mechanism in BE services is contention-based,
meaning there are several shared slots for bandwidth request
and each BE connection contends for sending its request to
the BS via the shared slots.
This scenario consists of one BS, five SSs and one
server. Each SS generates a BE effort flow towards the
server node. The BE service chosen in this simulation is
Email over UDP, in order to eliminate the overhead
introduced by the TCP retransmissions and also to evaluate
the resource allocation in optimum conditions. The default
scheduler for BE service flows in Opnet is Weighted Round
Robin (WRR).
The purpose of this simulation is to compare the
bandwidth allocation for BE flows (Fig. 1) with that obtained
for ertPS flows, which is described in the next simulation.
Figure 2. BE simulation statistics
BS does not have any unicast uplink request polling
obligation for BE SSs. Therefore, a long period can run
without transmitting any BE packets, typically when the
network is in the congestion state. It also must be taken into
account that there are no QoS specifications for BE service
flows so, the BE throughput is below the ertPS throughput
in the same network load and simulation parameters.
B. ErtPS service flows
This service flow was introduced in the standard for a
better management of VoIP traffic. This type of traffic has
active and silent periods and the scheduler needs to correctly
identify the silent period. This requirement prevents the
waste of resources being allocated during silent. Once traffic
is detected, the BS should immediately allocate a grant for
the MS to send a bandwidth request. To indicate their on/off
states, the MS can use a reserved bit in the MAC header to
piggyback a zero bandwidth request or it can send a message
to the BS. When voice is detected, the MS can issue a
piggyback or it can use the contention region or the
codeword over CQICH. Piggybacking and contention region
help in reducing the overhead but the second needs the
introduction of a back-off mechanism.
The simulated scenario consists of one BS, five SSs and
one server. Each SS generates an ertPS flow towards the
server. The ertPS flow was modeled by Interactive voice
traffic sent over UDP. The statistics obtained are presented
bellow.
Figure 3. ErtPS statistics
The negative jitter in the graph above indicates that the
time difference between the packets at the destination node
was less than at the source node. The delay constraint
specified in the simulation was 20ms. As it can be seen, the
latency is in acceptable limits.
When using the contention region, the number of
contention slots should be close to the number of
connections that are trying to send the bandwidth request.
This way, the delay introduced by the contention resolution
is eliminated. During successive modifications of the number
of request slots, the collision rate was reduced and
throughput increased while latency decreased.
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C. The five QoS classes combination
The network topology for the third simulation remains
the same as in the other two scenarios presented above. The
difference consists in defining a different service flow for
each SS. The five services used in this simulation and the
corresponding scheduling types are presented below: voice
without silence suppression with UGS, voice with silence
suppression with ertPS, video conference with rtPS, FTP
with nrtPS and email with BE.
This simulation is based on two scenarios where the
maximum sustained traffic rate and the minimum reserved
traffic rate were differently defined.
1) Simulation I
The figure below illustrates the MAC service class
definition for the first scenario.
Figure 4. MAC service class definition – Simulation I
In order to analyze the bandwidth allocation for each
service flow defined in this simulation, a statistic of
requested and admitted bandwidth is presented below.
Figure 5. Bandwidth allocation – Simulation I
As it may be seen in Fig. 5, there are no rejected
connections and the requested bandwidth is equal to the
admitted bandwidth measured in sps. For our simulations
one symbol is 4.5 bits. The purpose of this table is to show
the bandwidth assignment only for the priority traffic.
Having no QoS requirements, BE service flows get what it
remains after the priority bandwidth allocation and that value
is calculated afterwards.
 Figure 6. Delay Statistics – Simulation I
The delay statistics for real time service flows show that
the maximum delay requirements specified in Fig.4 are
achieved.
2) Simulation II
In this scenario the maximum sustained and minimum
reserved traffic have been reduced (Fig. 7).
Figure 7. MAC service class definition – Simulation II
Bandwidth allocation results (Fig. 8) show that, as
expected, the admitted bandwidth decreased, but the
proportion between the requested and admitted bandwidth is
the same as in the first simulation. This scenario has no
rejected connections.
Figure 8. Bandwidth statistics – Simulation II
The delays for the real time services in the second
simulation (Fig. 7) are greater than in the first one, but still
accomplish the maximum latency requirements for each of
service flow.
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Figure 9. Delay
IV. CONCLUSIONS
Compared to one of our previous study developed in
QualNet, OPNET has availability for time graphs. This is
very important when studying resource allocation. Although
more complex than QualNet, OPNET does not have the
possibility of modifying the default way of allocating
resources for the UL flows. In QualNet, the user can change
the UL scheduler but the lack of time graphs makes the
results difficult to compare.
The UL resource allocation in WIMAX has 2 parts. First
of all, the number of slots being allocated to a connection
must be calculated while maintaining the QoS specifications.
Then, the scheduler must select the subcarriers and time
intervals best suited for a given user. The target of this all
process is to minimize power consumption, bit error rate,
latency and increasing throughput. Other important factors
that must be optimized for UL schedulers are fairness of
resource allocation, the complexity of the algorithm and its
scalability for an increased number of users.
Having a combination of five defined traffic classes and
many bandwidth request mechanisms, the UL scheduling in
WIMAX is indeed a complex design problem. Although
IEEE 802.16e was finalized, the UL resource allocation
algorithm remains open to new ideas and debates.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Oana Iosif and Elena-Roxana Cirstea are POSDRU grant
beneficiaries offered through POSDRU/6/1.5/S/16 and
POSDRU/6/1.5/S19 contracts.
REFERENCES
[1] www.opnet.com/events/webinars
[2] OPNET Documentation – WIMAX 802.16e Model User Guide.
[3] K. Chen, J.Roberto B. De Marca, Mobile WIMAX, Wiley, 2008,
pp.6–45.
[4] C. So-In, R. Jain, A. Tamimi, “Scheduling in IEEE 802.16e Mobile
WIMAX Networks: Key Issues and a Survey”, IEEE Journal on
selected areas in communications, vol. 27, 2009.
[5] S. Kim, I. Yeom, “Performance Analysis of Best Effort Traffic in
IEEE 802.16 Networks”, in press.
[6] IEEE 802.16e-2005 Standard, Amendment for physical and medium
access control layers for combined fixed and mobile operation in
licensed band, 2005.
[7] R. Cirstea, S. Ciochina, O. Fratu, S. Halunga, Several Aspects of the
Uplink Scheduling in Wimax, Telsiks 2009