Modified WRR Scheduling Algorithm for WiMAX Networks

Abstract

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), which is also known as 802.16 standard, supports last-mile broadband access wireless networks. WiMAX has many advantages including wide coverage area and high bandwidth. These advantages enable WiMAX to support long transmission range and high data rate compared to cellular and WiFi network. WiMAX technology uses a number of scheduling techniques in the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, which is responsible for the utilization of available resources in the networks and distribute them among users in order to ensure the desired quality of service. In this study, we propose a Modified Weighted Round Robin (MWRR) scheduler in order to decrease the average end-to-end delay and improve the average throughput. The proposed scheduling technique has been designed and simulated using the QualNet 5.0.2 network simulator. In order to evaluate the performance of our proposed approach, we compared our results to the results of well-known scheduling techniques (weighted Round Robin (WRR), Strict Priority (SP), and Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ)). The average percentage of improvement was around 4%.