A Dynamic Frame Partitioning Scheme for IEEE 802.16 Mesh and Multihop Relay Networks

The IEEE 802.16 standard, also known as WiMAX, defines flexible frame structures to support applications classified into different WiMAX traffic classes. The standard defines two types of scheduling to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) requirements of these applications - centralized and distributed. However, the standard does not specify how the frame can be dynamically partitioned among its centralized and distributed schedulers or uplink and downlink schedulers. Through efficient partitioning that dynamically adapts the partitioning based on demand, network can support more user applications with different QoS requirements, and hence increase the revenues of service providers. In this paper, we propose a novel and general dynamic frame partitioning scheme for IEEE 802.16 mesh and IEEE 802.16j multi-hop relay networks. The scheme uses a dynamic Markov model that studies the frame utilization over current frames to predict efficient partitions for future frames. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves average frame utilization and decreases packet dropping.