Dynamically alternating power saving scheme for IEEE 802.16e mobile broadband wireless access systems

Abstract

Power saving is one of the most important features that extends the lifetime of portable devices in mobile wireless networks. The IEEE 802.16e mobile broadband wireless access system adopts a power saving mechanism with a binary truncated exponent algorithm for determining sleep intervals. When using this standard power saving scheme, there is often a delay before data packets are received at the mobile subscriber station (MSS). In order to extend the lifetime of a MSS, the battery energy must be used efficiently. This paper presents a dynamically alternating sleep interval scheduling algorithm as a solution to deal with the power consumption problem. We take into account different traffic classes and schedule a proper sequence of power saving classes. The window size of the sleep interval is calculated dynamically according to the packet arrival rate. We make a tradeoff between the power consumption and packet delay. The method achieves the goal of efficiently reducing the listening window size, which leads to increased power saving. The performance of our proposed scheme is compared to that of the standard power saving scheme. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of our power saving scheme and its ability to strike the appropriate performance balance between power saving and packet delay for a MSS in an IEEE 802.16e mobile broadband wireless access system.