Overall Delay Analysis of IEEE 802.16 Network

In this paper we conduct a delay analysis of IEEE 802.16 wireless metropolitan area network. In particular, we address the overall message delay, which consists of the reservation and scheduling components. Unicast polling is used for bandwidth reservation and round-robin scheduling is applied at the base station. A discrete-time analytical model is developed with general independent and identically distributed arrivals during a time slot. The model enables asymmetric traffic flows and different message sizes at the subscriber stations. The exact mean overall delay is obtained for the nrtPS service flow in the scenario when the base station splits the subscriber stations into individually polled groups. The analytical model is verified by means of simulation.