Improving the Performance of the Distributed Scheduler in IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are a viable solution to provide broadband wireless access (BWA) in a cost efficient and flexible manner. The IEEE 802.16 standard is currently one of the most interesting BWA standards. Besides the popular point-to-multipoint mode it defines an optional mesh mode. This paper evaluates the performance of the coordinated distributed scheduler (C-DSCH), defined by the IEEE 802.16 standard for mesh mode. Analytical as well as simulation results show, that this mechanism has a scalability problem that leads to poor performance in dense networks and aggravates QoS provisioning. To solve this, a dynamic adaptation mechanism is proposed, that is able to reduce the contention and to enhance the performance (throughput) in dense networks.