Congestion control over links for IEEE 802.16 mesh networks

As one of the promising broadband wireless access technologies, IEEE 802.16 mesh networks need to guarantee the QoS requirement from users. But unfortunately, traditional congestion control strategies cannot work well in this kind of network, due to lack of precise congestion indication and the unique characteristics of shared wireless media. In this paper, a novel but rational congestion control strategy is proposed based on IEEE 802.16 Mesh networks. On the one hand, over every active link, the source node performs ‘global congestion control’ that suppressed the increase in load on a link. On the other hand, every node along the path implements ‘local congestion control’ that balances its buffer occupancy. Simulation results demonstrate that this congestion control strategy over links (CCLs) is effective to alleviate network congestion, and can guarantee better communication quality in an overloaded network.