Survey of scheduling algorithms in IEEE 802.16 PMP networks

IEEE 802.16 standard has been proposed to support wide-range wireless broadband access. It is based on a common medium access control (MAC) protocol compliance with several physical layer specifications and operates in two modes Point-to-multipoint (PMP) and mesh mode. Physical layer specifications and MAC protocol signaling are already well defined for the standard. But, scheduling policies for IEEE 802.16 have been left as open issue to be explored by equipment manufactures. The objective of this survey is to investigate scheduling issues to ensure quality of service (QoS) support for WiMAX networks. Design issues for the development of schedulers have been presented. Classification and characteristics of various techniques based on their fundamental working principle are considered and summarized. Impact-able future issues in the area of QoS support for WiMAX have also been discussed.