We present an analytical model that enables throughput evaluation of Opportunistic Spectrum Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OS-OFDMA) networks. The core feature of the model, based on a discrete time Markov chain, is the consideration of different channel and subchannel allocation strategies under different Primary and Secondary user types, traffic and priority levels. The analytical model also assesses the impact of different spectrum sensing strategies on the throughput of OS-OFDMA network. The analysis applies to the IEEE 802.22 standard, to evaluate the impact of two-stage spectrum sensing strategy and varying temporal activity of wireless microphones on the IEEE 802.22 throughput. Our study suggests that OS-OFDMA with subchannel notching and channel bonding could provide almost ten times higher throughput compared with the design without those options, when the activity and density of wireless microphones is very high. Furthermore, we confirm that OS-OFDMA implementation without subchannel notching, used in the IEEE 802.22, is able to support real-time and non-real-time quality of service classes, provided that wireless microphones temporal activity is moderate (with approximately one wireless microphone per 3,000 inhabitants with light urban population density and short duty cycles). Finally, two-stage spectrum sensing option improves OS-OFDMA throughput, provided that the length of spectrum sensing at every stage is optimized using our model.
A novel subcarrier-pair based opportunistic DF protocol is proposed for cooperative downlink OFDMA transmission aided by a decode-and-forward (DF) relay. Specifically, user message bits are transmitted in two consecutive equal-duration time slots. A subcarrier in the first slot can be paired with a subcarrier in the second slot for the DF relay-aided transmission to a user. In particular, the source and the relay can transmit simultaneously to implement beamforming at the subcarrier in the second slot for the relay-aided transmission. Each unpaired subcarrier in either the first or second slot…
In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for high throughput in WiFi networks, the IEEE 802.11ax (11ax) standard introduces orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). In this letter, we address the station-resource unit scheduling problem in downlink OFDMA of 11ax subject to minimum throughput requirements. To deal with the infeasible instances of the constrained problem, we propose a novel scheduling policy based on weighted max-min fairness, which maximizes the minimum fraction between the achievable and minimum required throughputs. Thus, the proposed policy has a well-define…
We consider the scheduling and resource allocation problem in AP-initiated uplink OFDMA transmissions of IEEE 802.11ax networks. The uplink OFDMA resource allocation problem is known to be non-convex and difficult to solve in general. However, due to the special subcarrier allocation model of IEEE 802.11ax, the utility maximization problem involving the instantaneous rates of stations can be formulated as an assignment problem, and hence can be solved using the Hungarian method. In this paper, we address the more general problem of stochastic network utility maximization. Specifically, we maxi…
Initial ranging constitutes a part of the synchronization procedure employed by the wireless communication standards. This allows the base station (BS) to detect the subscriber stations (SS) that are willing to commence communication. In addition, the ranging process allows the BS to estimate the uplink channel parameters of these SSs. Accurate estimation of these parameters are crucial as they ensure that the uplink signals from all the SSs arrive at the BS synchronously and approximately at the same power level. However, this detection and estimation problem turns out to be very challenging …
Support of real-time applications that impose strict requirements on packet loss ratio and latency is an essential feature of the next generation Wi-Fi networks. Initially introduced in the 802.11ax amendment to the Wi-Fi standard, uplink OFDMA seems to be a promising solution for supported low-latency data transmission from the numerous stations to an access point. In this paper, we study how to allocate OFDMA resources in an 802.11ax network and propose an algorithm aimed at providing the delay less than one millisecond and reliability up to 99.999\% as required by numerous real-time applica…
We envision a scenario of opportunistic spectrum access among multiple links when the available spectrum is not contiguous due to the presence of external interference sources. Non-contiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (NC-OFDM) is a promising technique to utilize such disjoint frequency bands in an efficient manner. In this paper we study the problem of fair spectrum allocation across multiple NCOFDM-enabled point-to-point cognitive radio links under certain practical considerations that arise from such non-contiguous access. When using NC-OFDMA, the channels allocated to a co…
In this paper, we consider a single-cell IEEE 802.16 environment in which the base station allocates subchannels to the subscriber stations in its coverage area. The subchannels allocated to a subscriber station are shared by multiple connections at that subscriber station. To ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) performances, two Connection Admission Control (CAC) mechanisms, namely, threshold-based and queue-aware CAC mechanisms are considered at a subscriber station. A queuing analytical framework for these admission control mechanisms is presented considering Orthogonal Frequency Division M…
Recently, IEEE 802.11ax Task Group has adapted OFDMA as a new technique for enabling multi-user transmission. It has been also decided that the scheduling duration should be same for all the users in a multi-user OFDMA so that the transmission of the users should end at the same time. In order to realize that condition, the users with insufficient data should transmit null data (i.e. padding) to fill the duration. While this scheme offers strong features such as resilience to Overlapping Basic Service Set (OBSS) interference and ease of synchronization, it also poses major side issues of degra…
Next generation Wi-Fi networks are expected to support real-time applications that impose strict requirements on the packet transmission delay and packet loss ratio. Such applications form an essential target for the future Wi-Fi standard, namely IEEE 802.11be, the development process of which started in 2019. A promising way to provide efficient real-time communications in 802.11be networks requires some modification of the uplink OFDMA feature originally introduced in the IEEE 802.11ax amendment to the Wi-Fi standard. This feature allows the access point to reserve channel resources for upco…
Packet and flow scheduling algorithms for WiMAX has been a topic of interest for a long time since the very inception of WiMAX networks. WiMAX offers advantages particularly in terms of Quality of service it offers over a longer range at the MAC level. In our work, we propose two credit based scheduling schemes one in which completed flows distributes the left over credits equally to all higher priority uncompleted flows(ODRREDC) and another in which completed flows give away all the excess credits to the highest priority uncompleted flow(ODRRSDC). Both the schemes are compatible with 802.16 M…
We propose a multicast scheduling scheme to exploit content reuse when there is asynchronicity in user requests. A unicast transmission setup is used for content delivery, while multicast transmission is employed opportunistically to reduce wireless resource usage. We then develop a multicast scheduling scheme for the downlink multiple-input multiple output orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing system in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN). At each time slot, the scheduler serves the users by either unicast or multicast transmission. Out-sequence data received by a user is stor…
IEEE 802.16m amends the IEEE 802.16 Wireless MAN-OFDMA specification to provide an advanced air interface for operation in licenced bands. It will meet the cellular layer requirements of IMT-Advanced next generation mobile networks. It will be designed to provide significantly improved performance compared to other high rate broadband cellular network systems. For the next generation mobile networks, it is important to consider increasing peak, sustained data reates, corresponding spectral efficiencies, system capacity and cell coverage as well as decreasing latency and providing QoS while car…
The new IEEE 802.11 standard, IEEE 802.11ax, has the challenging goal of serving more users compared to its predecessor IEEE 802.11ac, enabling consistent and reliable streams of data (average throughput) per station. In this paper we explore some of the IEEE 802.11ax new mechanisms and compare between the upper bounds on the throughputs of the Downlink unidirectional UDP Multi Users (MU) triadic based on Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) transmission multiplexing format in IEEE 802.11ax vs. IEEE 802.11ac in the Single User (SU) …
The new IEEE 802.11 standard, IEEE 802.11ax, has the challenging goal of serving more Uplink (UL) traffic and users as compared with his predecessor IEEE 802.11ac, en- abling consistent and reliable streams of data (average throughput) per station. In this paper we explore several new IEEE 802.11ax UL scheduling mechanisms and compare between the maximum throughputs of unidirectional UDP Multi Users (MU) triadic. The evaluation is conducted based on Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Acceess (OFDMA) transmission multiplexing format in IEEE 802.11ax…
IEEE 802.11 DCF is the MAC protocol currently used in wireless LANs. 802.11 DCF is inefficient due to two types of overhead; channel idle time and collision time. This paper presents the design and performance evaluation of an efficient MAC protocol for wireless networks, called Token-DCF. Token-DCF decreases both idle time and collision time. In Token-DCF, each station keeps track of neighboring links' queue length by overhearing of transmitted packets on the wireless medium. The result is then used to assign privileges to the network stations. A privileged station does not follow the backoff…
This dissertation studies different aspects of D2D communications and its impact on the key performance indicators of the network. We design an architecture for the collaboration of cellular users by means of timely exploited D2D opportunities. We begin by presenting the analytical study on opportunistic outband D2D communications. The study reveals the great potential of opportunistic outband D2D communications for enhancing energy efficiency, fairness, and capacity of cellular networks when groups of D2D users can be form and managed in the cellular network. Then we introduce a protocol that…
In 2019 IEEE 802 LAN/MAN Standards Committee started the development of the next major amendment of the Wi-Fi standard: the IEEE 802.11be, also known as Wi-Fi 7. This new amendment will introduce many new functions and will improve the existing ones that will make Wi-Fi more efficient in many new scenarios. One of the scenarios is the service of Real-Time Applications with strict requirements on latency and reliability of communications. Providing low latencies can be challenging in Wi-Fi because of the unlicensed spectrum and related interference from neighboring devices. In this paper, we co…
Opportunistic Routing (OR) is a novel routing technique for wireless mesh networks that exploits the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. OR combines frames from multiple receivers and therefore creates a form of Spatial Diversity, called MAC Diversity. The gain from OR is especially high in networks where the majority of links has a high packet loss probability. The updated IEEE 802.11n standard improves the physical layer with the ability to use multiple transmit and receive antennas, i.e. Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO), and therefore already offers spatial diversity on the ph…
This paper presents a novel Advanced Activity-Aware (AAA) scheme to optimize and improve Multi-Channel Operations based on the IEEE 1609.4 standard in wireless access vehicular environments (WAVE). The proposed scheme relies on the awareness of the vehicular safety load to dynamically find an optimal setup for switching between service channel intervals (SCHI) and control channel intervals (CCHI). SCHI are chosen for non-critical applications (e.g. infotainment), while CCHI are utilized for critical applications (e.g. safety-related). We maximize the channel utilization without sacrificing oth…
The rapidly growing number of wireless devices running applications that require high bandwidths, has resulted in increasing demands for the unlicensed frequency spectrum. Given the scarcity of allocated unlicensed frequencies, meeting such demands can become a serious concern. Cognitive Radio (CR)technology opens the door for the opportunistic use of the licensed spectrum to partially address the issues relevant to the limited availability of unlicensed frequencies. Combining CR and Wi-Fi to form the socalled White-Fi networks, has been proposed for achieving higher spectrum utilization. This…
This paper analyzes the saturation throughput of a cognitive single hop WLAN overlaid on a primary IEEE 802.16e TDD WiMAX network. After the contention among the secondary nodes, the winner node transmits its data packet in the empty slots of downlink subframes of WiMAX. Regarding the OFDMA structure as well as time-scheduled resources in WiMAX, the time duration of opportunities for the secondary network does not follow simple exponential on-off pattern. To model the dynamic behavior of opportunities for secondary nodes as well as contentions to exploit the opportunities, we propose an analyt…
The fairness of IEEE 802.11 wireless networks (including Wireless LAN and Ad-hoc networks) is hard to predict and control because of the randomness and complexity of the MAC contentions and dynamics. Moreover, asymmetric channel conditions such as those caused by capture and channel errors often lead to severe unfairness among stations. In this paper we propose a novel distributed scheduling algorithm that we call VLS, for ``{\em variable-length scheduling}'', that provides weighted fairness to all stations despite the imperfections of the MAC layer and physical channels. Distinct features of …
Relay-assisted cooperative wireless communication has been shown to have significant performance gains over the legacy direct transmission scheme. Compared with single relay based cooperation schemes, utilizing multiple relays further improves the reliability and rate of transmissions. Distributed space-time coding (DSTC), as one of the schemes to utilize multiple relays, requires tight coordination between relays and does not perform well in a distributed environment with mobility. In this paper, a cooperative medium access control (MAC) layer protocol, called \emph{STiCMAC}, is designed to a…
