End-to-end delay performance analysis in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multi-hop Relay (MMR) networks

The IEEE 802.16 is a series of telecommunication standards that provides Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) services and has received great attention worldwide. The IEEE 802.16j emerged as a standard in the middle of 2009, specifying the procedure of supporting Mobile Multi-hop Relay (MMR) networks. The use of the “multi-hop” architectures not only requires a re-design of the functional implementations of both physical and link layers, because the topology in such networks is fundamentally different from that of single hop, but also necessitates further investigation of other “non-functional” properties, such as end-to-end packet delay performance, which is one of the Quality of Service (QoS) metrics and is considered to be critical for the future success of multi-hop network deployment. In this paper we report the development of a new Matlab/Simulink cross-layer simulation platform for integration on top of the IEEE 802.16 PHY standard model, and will use Effective Capacity (EC) multi-hop model to evaluate and analyse the multi-hop end-to-end link-layer packet delay performance. We report simulation results for three-hop scenarios under different traffic load conditions and verify the efficacy of our newly developed model through comparisons to analytically derived models.