An enhanced election-based transmission timing mechanism in IEEE 802.16 mesh networks

IEEE 802.16, also known as the worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), defines point-to-multipoint (PMP) and mesh modes to support wireless medium access. The mesh mode provides an easy and cheap way to construct the last-mile connection. The multi-hop environment with spatial reuse can use the radio resource more efficiently. IEEE 802.16 defines three kinds of scheduling algorithms without specifying the detail. In this paper, we propose a new enhanced election-based transmission timing mechanism to solve the problem currently on the coordinated distributed scheduling algorithm. According to the simulation results by using the network simulator ns2, the new mechanism can prevent the unexpected collisions of MSH-DSCH messages to gain better performance on time-sensitive traffic.