Contention based bandwidth request with signaling analysis in IEEE 802.16 two hop relay networks

In this paper, we propose a joint contention-based bandwidth request mechanism for WiMAX two-hop relay networks. For this purpose, we considered contention by message and code mechanisms. These are normally deployed in single-hop networks. This message scheme suffers from low contention efficiency and higher access delay when the number of mobile stations (MSs) in the network increases. Conversely, this code technique undergoes transmission failure due to the inappropriate setting of the detection threshold at relay stations (RSs). However, these message and code mechanisms are advantageous when they are carried out at appropriate hops. Among the four possible options created by combining the message and code methods, the message requests from MS to RS and code requests from RS to base stations (BSs) performed better than other possible combinations. Using a comprehensive case study and simulation results, we generated signaling examples that confirmed the significance of the proposed method in terms of signaling overhead, network throughput, connection delay and queuing size.

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► We investigated heuristic contention based bandwidth request (BR) mechanisms for WiMAX two hop relay network.
► The idea is to combine message and code bandwidth requests over two hops of the link.
► Experiments are carried out for message–message (MM) BR, code–code (CC) BR, message–code (MC) BR and code–message (CM) BR mechanisms.
► Detailed signaling cost analysis using case studies is carried out for MC and CC BR mechanisms.
► Simulation results verify that MC BR performs better than other three BR mechanisms.