A Burst Overlapping and Scheduling Scheme (BOSS)

in IEEE 802.16 OFDMA Systems

Chi-Tao Chiang and Kuei-Ping Shih
Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering
Tamkang University, Tamshui 251, Taipei, Taiwan
Email: kpshih@mail.tku.edu.tw

Frequency Frequency

Abstract—Burst is an atomic bandwidth allocation unit in Domain Domain

IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems. Due to the satisfaction of the Downlink (DL) Subframe Downlink (DL) Subframe

Subchannel Logical Number

rectangular mapping constraint in the downlink allocations,

FCH
Subchannel Logical Number

FCH
bandwidth called OFDMA slots may be over-allocated, resulting Subchannel
Offset
Subchannel
Offset

in the wastage of the downlink bandwidth. In order to alleviate

OFDMA

Preamble
OFDMA

Preamble
IE Symbol Offset
IE Symbol Offset

the wastage of downlink bandwidth, this paper proposes a Burst Number of

Burst Number of
subchannls
Burst
subchannls Burst
Overlapping and Scheduling Scheme, termed BOSS, for IEEE

DL-MAP
DL-MAP
Number of Number of
Burst
802.16 OFDMA systems. The BOSS is to alleviate the number of OFDMA
symbols
OFDMA
symbols

over allocated OFDMA slots caused by the allocation constraint

of downlink bandwidth by means of allowing two neighboring Time Time
Domain
bursts to share these over allocated slots. Simulation results show
OFDMA Symbol Number Domain OFDMA Symbol Number

Over-allocated OFDMA slots

that the proposed mechanism can increase not only the network
(b)
throughput, but the subchannel utilization. (a)

I. I NTRODUCTION Fig. 1. Demonstrations of downlink burst allocations (a) before adjustment

Supporting WirelessMAN-OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiple Access) as transmission technique in World
Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) provides a
reliable and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) wireless transmission.
Undoubtedly, WiMAX, based on IEEE 802.16 standard [1],
can be regarded as one of the promising and viable solution
or standard for the next generation communication technology.
In IEEE 802.16 OFDMA systems, the physical layer (PHY)
operates in a framed format composed of OFDMA symbols in
the time domain and subchannels in the frequency domain. The
bandwidth allocation unit for mobile stations (MSs) is called
a burst. For one burst, one DL-MAP information element (IE)
of the DL-MAP message is mapped to record the scheduling
information such as the burst profile (BP), position and size
in the downlink subframe. The BP includes the modulation,
repetition and coding for delivery of this burst. The position
and size of this bust can be identified as four parameters
including OFDMA symbol offset, subchannel offset, number
of OFDMA symbols and number of subchannels, as illustrated
in Fig. 1(a). The details of these parameters are as Section II.
One of the main restrictions for burst allocations in the
downlink transmissions is an arbitrary rectangular region
made up of several OFDMA slots and each OFDMA slot
is composed of subchannels and OFDMA symbols. Due to
the restriction, more OFDMA slots will be allocated than the
requirements and these over allocated OFDMA slots padding
useless information cause the bandwidth wastage, as illustrated
in Fig. 1(a). Recently, much related work [2]–[7] has con-
tributed to the design of downlink burst allocation mechanism
in the IEEE 802.16 OFDMA system. Most of them do not
take the bandwidth wastage caused by these over allocated
and (b) after adjustment.
OFDMA slots in bursts. If these over allocated OFDMA slots
can be shared by the neighboring bursts, rather than padding
useless information, more bursts can be scheduled and the
bandwidth utilization can be improved, as shown in Fig. 1(b).
Based on the above mentions, the paper proposes burst over-
lapping and scheduling scheme, termed BOSS, for bandwidth
utilization gains in the IEEE 802.16 OFDMA-based system.
By sharing these over allocated OFDMA slots, the bandwidth
wastage can be alleviated and more bursts can be scheduled
in this frame. BOSS can cooperate with any proposed burst
allocation algorithms to improve the bandwidth utilizations
in the IEEE 802.16 OFDMA-based system. This paper is
the first one to reuse these over allocated OFDMA slots and
allow two neighboring bursts to share over allocated OFDMA
slots. The simulation result highlights that the burst allocation
algorithms with BOSS outperforms the ones without BOSS in
the throughput, satisfaction ratio, and bandwidth utilization.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
the proposed burst overlapping and scheduling scheme (BOSS)
is presented. Then, the performance evaluations are depicted
in Section III. Finally, Section IV concludes the paper.
II. BOSS: B URST OVERLAPPING AND S CHEDULING
S CHEME
Based on the above mentions, due to the constraint
of rectangular mapping for each burst, the over allocated
OFDMA slots padding useless information cause the band-
width wastage. Therefore, this paper proposes a burst over-
lapping and scheduling scheme, termed BOSS, to allow two

978-1-4673-1378-0/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE 379 ICUFN 2012

adjacent bursts to share these over allocated OFDMA slots, Algorithm 1: Burst Overlapping and Scheduling Scheme
rather than to pad with null information. Before introducing // To be performed by BS
BOSS, four scheduling parameters included in IEs of DL-MAP begin
STEP 1. Check and adjust the position of over allocated OFDMA
message should be described first. slots for each symbol;
STEP 2. Shift bursts to fill the consequent over-allocated OFDMA
A. Structure of IEs in the DL-MAP message slots;
STEP 3. Fragment over-allocated OFDMA slots;
The DL-AMP message contains scheduling information of STEP 4. Relocate fragmented bursts in a best fit manner without
the degrade of BP;
each burst in the downlink subframe. Each IE in the DL-MAP end
message consists of four primitive parameters to specify the
scheduling position and region size of a burst in the downlink
Frequency Frequency
subframe. Parameters are described as follows and illustrated Domain Domain

in Fig. 1. Downlink (DL) Subframe Downlink (DL) Subframe

Subchannel Logical Number

Subchannel Logical Number

FCH
OFDMA symbol offset (8 bits): The offset of the

FCH
• cio cio
OFDMA symbol is measured in OFDMA symbols from t io ti t io ti

Preamble
Preamble
( c iw , t iw )
the downlink symbol in which the preamble is transmitted ci ci
( ciw , tiw )

bi bi
with the symbol immediately following the preamble be- w w

DL-MAP
( c wj , t wj )

DL-MAP
(c , t )
ing offset 1. This parameter specifies the starting OFDMA
j j

symbol time of the burst in the downlink subframe.
• Subchannel offset (6 bits): The lowest OFDMA sub-
channel index used for carrying the burst, starting from
subchannel 0. This parameter specifies the starting sub-
channel index of the burst in the downlink subframe.
• Number of OFDMA symbols (8 bits): The number of
OFDMA symbols that are used (fully or partially) to
carry the downlink burst. The value of the field shall be
a multiple of the OFDMA slot length in symbols.
• Number of subchannels (6 bits): The number of sub-
channels with subsequent indices, used to carry the burst.
The first two parameters, OFDMA symbol offset and sub-
channel offset are used to specify the starting position of the
burst. The other two parameters, number of OFDMA symbols
and number of subchannels are used to specify shape of this
burst in the downlink subframe. Through these four primitive
parameters described in the DL-MAP message, the scheduling
position and region size of a burst in the downlink subframe
can be easily defined by BS and each burst must be rectangular
mapping. Since the DL-MAP message is delivered with the
most robust BP, MSs kown the accurate position and region
size of each burst based on the four primitive parameters.
Base on the above mentions, for each burst bi , the IE of
burst bi can be represented as a scheduling vector S i =<
toi , coi , ti , ci >, where toi , coi , ti ,and ci , stand for the OFDMA
symbol offset, subchannel offset, number of OFDMA symbols
and number of subchannels of burst bi , respectively.
B. Detailed descriptions of BOSS
In order to fully utilize the over-allocated OFDMA slots,
this paper proposed a burst overlapping and scheduling scheme
to make the two adjacent bursts share the over allocated
OFDMA slots. Algorithm 1 shows the generic structure of
BOSS. Since each MS has different receiving condition in each
subchannel, the bursts should be adjusted and shifted in a hor-
izontal manner to avoid the decrease of the supported bursts.
The detailed steps of BOSS are described as Algorithm 1.
bj bj
OFDMA Symbol Number
Time
Domain OFDMA Symbol Number
Time
Domain
Over-allocated OFDMA slots
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Demonstrations of downlink burst allocations (a) before adjustment
and (b) after adjustment.
Step 1. Check and adjust the position of over allocated
OFDMA slots for each symbol
Suppose that ri is the required OFDMA slots for burst bi .
i is the starting symbol time of over allocated OFDMA
tw
slots of bi . cwi is the starting subchannel index of over
allocated OFDMA slots of bi . Initially, for each burst bi ,
the position of the over allocated OFDMA slots must start
at symbol tw i = ti + ti in time domain and subchannel
o
ci = ci + ci − (ri − coi × toi ) in the frequency domain.
w o
Considering that two bursts, bi and bj are located at the same
end symbol time, ti + toi = tj + toj and on the adjacent
subchannels, ci + coi = coj . These over allocated OFDMA
slots for these bursts must be not adjacent and leads to lower
flexibility of the burst allocations, as shown in Fig. 2(a).
Consequently, the first step of BOSS is to adjust the position
of the over-allocated OFDMA slots to gather these OFDMA
slots to increase the flexibility of the burst allocations. In other
words, considering bi and bj , ti +toi = tj +toj and coi +ci = cw j ,
as shown in Fig. 2(b).
Step 2. Shift bursts to fill the over allocated OFDMA slots
After step 1, the over allocated OFDMA slots for each
symbol time can be gathered to increase the flexibility the
burst allocation. In this step, BS will determine if bursts can
be shifted to fill the over allocated OFDMA slots. Suppose that
the adjacent subchannels of over allocated OFDMA slots are
C = {coi , coi +1, coi +2, . . . , coj , coj +1 . . .}. Let the subchannels

380
 TABLE I
occupied by bk be Ck = {cok , cok +1, . . .}. If bk can be shifted to S IMULATION PARAMETERS .
fill the wasted bandwidth from the right side to the left side, the
subchannels occupied by bk must be the subset of the adjacent Parameter Value
subchannels occupied over allocated OFDMA slots. That is to Frame length 5 ms
FFT size 1024
say that Ck ⊆ C. Fig. 3(a) and Fig. 3(b) show the bandwidth Channel bandwidth 10 MHz
allocation before shifting and after shifting, respectively. This Number of subchannels 16
shifting operation can effectively alleviate the number of the Symbol time duration 100.8 µ
Ratio of occupied OFDMA symbols 29(Downlink), 18(Uplink)
over allocated OFDMA slots. Packet size 64 Bytes-1518 Bytes
Channel model Walfisch model and Ilegami model
Step 3. Fragment over-allocated OFDMA slots Modulation types QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM
Coding rate 1/2, 3/4
After step 2, most over allocated OFDMA slots can be Repetition of DL-MAP 4
alleviated. However, some over allocated OFDMA slots can Simulation time 10000 frames
not be fully utilized and these OFDMA slots are not adjacent,
as shown in Fig. 3(b). Therefore, using burst fragmentation 11000
can solve this problem. Since burst fragmentation will increase LM
LM+BOSS
10000
the control overhead of DL-MAP message, the tradeoff of the FIFO
FIFO+BOSS
released OFDMA slots and additional control overhead should 9000 OD

Throughput (kbps)
OD+BOSS

be taken into consideration. 8000

WFLL
WFLL+BOSS

DL-MAP message should be transmitted in the most robust 7000

burst profile, Therefore, if the released over-allocated OFDMA
6000
slots are less than the additional control overhead, the bursts
will not be fragmented; otherwise, release the over-allocated 5000

OFDMA slots and perform step 2. Take Fig. 3(b) for example. 4000

bi and bj will be fragmented because the number of OFDMA 3000

slots for additional control overhead are 1 for each fragmen- 2000
tation of one burst. Fig. 3(c) shows the final result of step 5 10 15 20
Number of MSs
25 30

3.
Step 4. Relocate fragmented bursts in a best fit manner
without the degrade of BP
In the step 3, fragmentation will lead to additional bursts
to be allocated. Therefore, Since each MS in each subchannel
has different receiving condition, selecting the bursts to fill
these unallocated OFDMA slots must take the supported BP
into consideration. Beside this, the size of each burst also be
taken into consideration due to the change of BP. In this step,
BS will relocate fragmented bursts in a best fit manner without
the degrade of BP and fit it into the consequently unallocated
OFDMA slots.
III. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATIONS
This paper conducts extensive simulations by using C++
to evaluate that the performance of BOSS which has been
performed after the burst allocation mechanism in terms of
the average network throughput and the average utilization. In
this simulation, the burst allocation mechanisms contains LM,
FIFO, WLFF, and OD. LM means that BS allocates a burst
to each MS by adopting the longest continuous subchannels
with the best burst profile. OD means that BS allocates a burst
based in a decreasing order of bandwidth requirement.
Fig. 4 illustrates the network throughput performance of the
greedy burst allocation mechanisms with BOSS and without
BOSS to the different number of MSs in the networks. The
network throughput is calculated as the ratio of the number
of transmitted data in Mega bytes and the frame length. As
excepted, the performance of all allocation mechanisms will
Fig. 4. Illustrations of the network density on the average Throughput
keep stable with the increase of MSs since the number of
bursts are up to saturated in one frame. No more bursts are
allowed to scheduled to this frame because of the fixed frame
length. From observed in this plot, the performance of all burst
allocation mechanisms with BOSS outperforms without BOSS
because BOSS fully utilizes the over allocated OFDMA slots
to increases the bandwidth utilizations.
Fig. 5 illustrates the utilization performance of the greedy
burst allocation mechanisms with BOSS and without BOSS
to the different number of MSs in the networks. The second
evaluated performance metric is utilization ratio per frame.
This metric reflects the the percentage of dowlink bandwidth
usage and bandwidth wastage. The utilization ratio are mainly
classified two parts: over allocated OFDMA slots and data
transmissions. Since BOSS fully uses over allocated OFDMA
slots and BOSS fit these over allocated OFDMA slots in a best
fit manner, the bandwidth utilizations can be highly decreased,
compared with the greedy burst mechanism without BOSS.
IV. C ONCLUSIONS
The paper proposes a burst overlapping and scheduling
scheme, termed BOSS for throughput and bandwidth uti-
lization gains by sharing the over allocated OFDMA slots
between two neighboring bursts. The main concept of BOSS
is to adjust the position of he over allocated OFDMA slots
to increase the bandwidth utilizations. The simulation results

381
 Frequency Frequency Frequency
Domain Domain Domain

Downlink (DL) Subframe Downlink (DL) Subframe Downlink (DL) Subframe

Subchannel Logical Number

FCH
Subchannel Logical Number

FCH

Subchannel Logical Number

FCH
cio cio cio
t io ti t io ti t io t i- 1

Preamble
Preamble

( ciw , tiw )

Preamble
( ciw , tiw )
ci ci ci
bi bi bi
bk bk bk

DL-MAP
( c wj , t wj )
DL-MAP

( c wj , t wj )

DL-MAP
bj bj bj

Time Time Time

OFDMA Symbol Number Domain OFDMA Symbol Number Domain OFDMA Symbol Number Domain
Over-allocated OFDMA slots
(b) (C)
(a)

Fig. 3. Demonstrations of downlink burst allocations (a) before adjustment and (b) after adjustment.

[6] Y. Ben-Shimol, I. Kitroser, and Y. Dinitz, “Two-dimensional Mapping for

Unused OFDMA Slots Wireless OFDMA Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, vol. 52,
Data Transmission Ratio no. 3, pp. 388–396, Sep. 2006.
[7] X. Jin, J. Zhou, J. Hu, J. Shi, and Y. Sun, “An Efficient Downlink Data
LM + BOSS Mapping Algorithm for IEEE 802.16e OFDMA Systems,” in Proceeding
LM of the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM),
WLFF + BOSS 2008, pp. 1–5.
WLFF
FIFO+BOSS
FIFO
OD+BOSS
OD
0 0.5 1
Average Utilization Ratio

Fig. 5. Illustrations of the network density on the average utilizations

show that the greedy burst allocations with BOSS outperforms

the ones without BOSS in the network throughput and the slot
utilization ratio up to 71.3% and 45.7%, respectively.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work was partially supported by the National Science
Council of the Republic of China under Grants NSC 100-
2221-E-032-028.

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