Broadcasting VBR Traffic in a WiMAX Network

The next generation of wireless networks (LTE, WiMAX and UMB) will have sufficient capacity to support video broadcasts in addition to unicast services such as voice and data. Since broadcast services are resource intensive, radio resources must be carefully managed to ensure proper operation of the unicast services. One approach is to allocate a fixed set of resources (a zone) specifically for broadcast services. Multiple multimedia streams are then multiplexed within this zone for broadcast over the air. In this paper we focus on the case of variable bit rate (VBR) streams with long range dependency. In this case buffering of streams to smooth out bursts is not sufficient and efficient resource multiplexing must instead be used for adequate delay performance. We present a novel scheduling algorithm that achieves significant multiplexing gains. This scheduler is designed for low terminal power utilization as well as high broadcast channel utilization.