Power-aware Opportunistic Downlink Scheduling in IEEE 802.16 wireless networks

The IEEE 802.16 is a standard for fixed and mobile Broadband Wireless Access (BWA). In this paper, we deal with two key challenges of 802.16-based networks. First, terminals close to cell edge experience poor channel quality, due to severe path-loss and high interference from concurrent transmissions in nearby cells. To address this issue, we propose a framework based on a static partitioning of bandwidth into chunks with different transmission power levels. Terminals with impaired channel conditions can then benefit from being allocated a higher amount of transmission power than the others. Secondly, transmissions should be scheduled according to Quality of Service (QoS) requirements to keep users with real-time video or voice calls satisfied, while best-effort connections should fairly share the remaining capacity. To this aim, we propose a scheduling algorithm, called Power-aware Opportunistic Downlink Scheduling (PODS), that aims at meeting both the QoS and fairness requirements, while taking into account the different power levels of the bandwidth chunks. The performance of the proposed scheduler is assessed through detailed packet-level simulation in realistic scenarios and compared with well-known scheduling algorithms. Results confirm that PODS is able to exploit power boosting to provide real-time connections with the desired level of QoS, irrespectively of their MSs' channel quality.