An Optimal Scheduling Algorithm for Maximizing Throughput in WiMAX Mesh Networks

The WiMAX mesh network (WMN) architecture is defined in the IEEE 802.16 standard for increasing network coverage and improving communication performance. In the past few years, several greedy or heuristic algorithms have been proposed to cope with the scheduling problem in WMNs. However, their performance highly depends on the network topology and bandwidth requests, and they do not achieve optimal performance in all cases. This paper proposes an optimal scheduling algorithm called the scheduling algorithm with dynamic programming approach (SADP), which exploits the opportunities of spatial reuse and maximizes the network throughput based on the network topology and the uplink bandwidth requests of each subscriber station. In addition, a heuristic scheduling algorithm (HSA) is proposed to reduce the computing complexity. The performance results were approximate to the optimal results. The simulation study reveals that the proposed SADP provides the WMN with maximal throughput and shortest transmission time, and the proposed HSA likely achieves the optimal results.