Fair, Class Based Packet Scheduling Scheme Considering Handoff Priority to Improve QoS for Broadband Wireless Access Systems

The success of emerging Broadband Wireless Access Systems (BWAs) depend on their ability to utilize the network resources in an efficient way. It´s a complex task due to heterogeneous service nature and diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of different applications that these systems support. Packet scheduling is one of the key components to provide QoS that plays a vital role in BWAs. This paper proposes a scheduling mechanism for providing QoS in mobile networks, which exploit IP as a transport technology for transferring data between base stations of Broadband Wireless Access Systems at the radio layer. In order to improve QoS a new scheduling algorithm is performed at both IP and radio layer, which exploit handoff priority scheduling principles and takes into account buffer occupancy and channel conditions. The fairness among the users of different classes is also accounted. Performance results obtained by computer simulation show that, by exploiting the new scheduling algorithm, the system is able to provide low handoff packet dropping rate, low packet forwarding rate, low packet delay and ensures fairness among different services.