Resource allocation and game theoretic scheduling with dynamic weight assignment in IEEE 802.16 fixed broadband wireless access systems

The IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access (BWA) system offers a cost-effective solution to the last-mile wireless connection problem. To provide the necessary QoS guarantees to the multimedia traffic in BWA systems while utilizing the resources as efficiently as possible, optimal scheduling mechanisms and resource allocation strategies are needed. In this paper, we model the resource request and distribution mechanism as a competition game between competing traffic types. A non-cooperative n-person general sum game is formulated which includes a dynamic weight adjustment mechanism to provide fairness among the competing traffic types. The game not only distributes the resource in a way to increase the aggregated utility of the whole system, but also provides priority and fairness for individual traffic types. Existence of Nash Equilibrium can be proved. A formula for dynamic weight adjustment is proposed which inherently prioritizes traffic types with strict constraints and also ensures that no traffic type suffers excessive delay. We analyze the system performance in terms of normalized system throughput and mean delay. The interference on the sub-carriers is considered during analysis. Performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated through simulation and compared with system which has static weights allocated. We show that our resource allocation mechanism includes priorities while the fairness is also appropriately considered.