Performance Evaluation of the IEEE 802.16 MAC for QoS Support

1. Performance Evaluation of the IEEE 802.16 MAC for QoS Support Aemen Hassaan Lodhi 05060021 Multimedia Communications Project (Spring 2006-07)

2. Outline • IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) • Project Objective • Simulation Environment • Performance Metrics • Experiments Carried out • Discussion of results • Conclusion

3. IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) • Wireless MAN – provides network access to subscriber stations (SS) with radio base stations (BS) • Offers an alternative to cabled access networks – fiber optic links, coaxial cables using cable modems, DSL links • Supports nomadic and mobile clients on the go (IEEE 802.16 e, 2004)

4. MAC layer • Manage the resources of the link air-link in efficiently and provide Quality of Service (QoS) differentiation for different connections/streams • Supporting Point to Multipoint and Mesh network models • Performing Link Adaption & ARQ functions • Transmission Scheduling • Admission Control • Link Initialization • Fragmentation and Retransmission

5. Project Objective • Verify via simulation the ability of IEEE 802.16 MAC to handle different types of traffic having different QoS requirements • The response of the protocol to different types of traffic and environments • Simulations of IEEE 802.16 on NS-2

6. Simulation Environment • NS 2 Simulator • PMP mode • Time Division Multiple Access mode for transmission from SSs to BS • Downlink and Uplink subframes duplexed using Frequency Division Duplex • Full Duplex Subscriber Stations

7. Simulator environment

8. Simulator Environment

9. Problems with Chang Gung University’s WiMAX Module • Couldn’t support more than 11~12 nodes when actual simulations were carried out • Generated Segmentation faults • Even though the transmissions from source nodes were cut-off the Base station continued to send traffic to receiver nodes!!

10. Problems with Chang Gung University’s WiMAX Module

11. WiMAX module by NIST, USA • Number of Nodes (the simulator crashes after 24 nodes) • Traffic (CBR, Poisson ON/OFF source, Pareto ON/OFF source to model web traffic, Real Audio, any mix of the above.) • Radio Propagation models (2-Ray ground model for open/sub-urban areas and Shadowing model for urban areas) • Mobility of nodes • Packet Sizes • A number of parameters at the physical layer e.g. modulation schemes • Does NOT offer choice of scheduling mechanism at the MAC layer. Only Best Effort Scheduler is available

12. Traffic Models • Constant Bit Rate • Pareto ON/OFF source to model web traffic • Voice over IP traffic • Followed the specs of ITU G7.11 • 64Kbps during talk spurt (fixed) • Average length of talk spurt 352 ms • Average length of silence period 650 ms • Videoconference traffic could not be run

13. Performance Evaluation • Throughput for different types of traffic • %age utilization of bandwidth vs. Input load • Packet loss rate for different traffic streams • Comparison of the response of IEEE 802.16 with Best Effort Scheduler to different traffic streams and different environments

14. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes CBR stream, Stationary nodes, 2Ray Ground

15. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Pareto ON/OFF source, Stationary nodes, 2Ray Ground

16. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Pareto ON/OFF stream, Stationary nodes, 2Ray

17. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes CBR stream, Mobile nodes, 2Ray

18. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Pareto ON/OFF stream, Mobile nodes, 2Ray

19. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes CBR stream, Stationary nodes, Shadowing

20. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Pareto On/Off stream, Mobile nodes, Shadowing

21. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes VoIP Traffic, Stationary nodes, 2Ray

22. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Traffic Mix (CBR + VoIP + Web)

23. CBR Stationary vs. Mobile Nodes

24. CBR, 2Ray Ground vs. Shadowing

25. Pareto On/Off source, 2Ray vs. Shadowing

26. CBR vs. Pareto throughput

27. Throughput (Mbps) vs. Number of nodes

28. Percentage Utilization of Bandwidth vs. Number of Nodes

29. Conclusions • Though utilization is high the standard with its current specifications (70 Mbps) will maximize its throughput at about 80 nodes. • Without a proper classification of streams at the base station the streams with stringent QoS will suffer great loss • With TDD polling mechanism the nodes generating traffic with stringent QoS requirements suffer a great deal

30. Packet loss rate vs. Number of Nodes Traffic Mix (CBR + VoIP + Web)

31. References 1. Claudio Cicconetti, Alessandro Erta, Luciano Lenzini, and Enzo Mingozzi, ‘Performance Evaluation of the IEEE 802.16 MAC for QoS Support’, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, VOL. 6, No. 1, January 2007 2. Jenhui Chen, Chih-Chieh Wang, Frank Chee-Da Tsai§, Chiang-Wei Chang, Syao-Syuan Liu, Jhenjhong Guo, Wei-Jen Lien, Jui-Hsiang Sum, and Chih-Hsin Hung, ‘The Design and Implementation of WiMAX Module for ns-2 Simulator’, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Proceeding from the 2006 workshop on ns-2: the IP network simulator 3. F.H.P. Fitzek and M. Reisslein, “MPEG4 and H.263 Video Traces for Network Performance Evaluation,” IEEE Network Magazine, vol. 15, no. 6, pp. 40-54 Nov. 2001. 4. NS-2 reference manual 5. ITU G7.11 specifications

32. References • “Radio Propagation Models”, Chapter 17, NS Documentation • P.M. Fiorini, “Voice over IP (VoIP) for Enterprise Networks: Performance Implications & Traffic Models”.