WiMAX quality of service deployment in disaster management

There are five different Quality of Service (QoS) classes defined by the IEEE 802.16e-2005: UGS, ertPS, rtPS, nrtPS and BE. It is well known that BE provides the lowest level of quality compared all other classes. In this paper, we investigate the performance of rtPS and BE QoS classes in an emergency and natural disaster scenario. We use the OPNET modeler for simulation purposes in order to evaluate rtPS and BE performance with particular focus on video conferencing/streaming and web browsing applications. It is possible that during a disaster BE is the only available service. Simulation results revealed that in certain situations, a user with BE QoS could provide higher throughput compared to the rtPS case. Consequently, we also evaluate the video conferencing/streaming application for the BE QoS case. Simulation results show that for a defined maximum number of users in the network and a certain combination of users that are allocated a QoS and a selected application e.g., web browsing or video conferencing, BE is shown to demonstrate a higher throughput than rtPS. The simulation results are discussed in the main body of the paper