Downlink Scheduling Algorithms in WiMAX: System Design and Testbed Experiments

The rapid growth in the demand for wireless internet access makes service providers seek proper technology for its last-mile access network. The Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is one of the most possible candidates for next generation wireless network technology, and is promoted by WiMAX Forum as a leading technology for wireless broadband service. Currently, the packet scheduling is not specified in the IEEE 802.16 standard, and is open to vendor implementation. In this thesis, we study downlink scheduling algorithm which is implemented in the Gemtek Pico Base Station (BS). In addition, we designed, modified and implemented several representative downlink scheduling algorithms into the Gemtek Pico BS. The algorithms are studied under several users with different channel condition, in order to test the system throughput, fairness, and frame utilization. From our experiment result, those implemented scheduling algorithms largely improves system average throughput due to channel-aware scheduling policies, and the efficiency of resource utilization is also improved