WiRA: an approach to resource control in WiMAX systems

Abstract

The emerging of Quality of Service (QoS)-enabled broadband wireless access technologies brings internetworking facilities by allowing the development of systems with high speed communications as well as service differentiation and bandwidth guarantees for communication sessions. The end-to-end QoS control in heterogeneous environments, where networks may be composed of links with different bandwidth capacities and may support several QoS models, is still an open issue. This paper proposes a QoS control approach to guarantee the quality level of sessions crossing Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) systems, independently of the QoS models or bandwidth capacities supported inside a WiMAX network as well as supported by a neighbour network. The proposed scheme is based on the coordination of resource allocation control with QoS mapping and adaptation mechanisms, which assures the quality level control of sessions over heterogeneous environments. Simulation results show the benefits of the proposed solution in reducing the session blocking probability and in optimizing the usage of network resources, while keeping sessions with an acceptable quality level during congestion periods.