Performance evaluation of a power saving mechanism in IEEE 802.16 wireless MANs with bi-directional traffic

Abstract

One of the most important ways for extending the battery lifetime of Mobile Stations (MSs) in a wireless Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) is to conserve the power consumption effectively. When a power saving mechanism with the sleep mode in IEEE 802.16-2009 is used, the system will be in a sleep state and the energy will be saved if both the Uplink (UL) and the Downlink (DL) are idle. In this paper, we present a new mathematical analysis for the system model with synchronous multiple vacations to capture the working principle of the Power Saving Class (PSC) type III in IEEE 802.16-2009 by taking into account the bi-directional traffic (the UL traffic and DL traffic together). By using the methods of a semi-Markov process and a two-dimensional embedded Markov chain, we derive the steady-state probability distribution of the system. Noting that the transmission of UL data frame will not be influenced by the sleep mode, but the sleep mode can be terminated by the arrival of UL data frames, we give the formula for the average delay of the DL data frames taking the bi-directional traffic into consideration. Moreover, we also present the expression for the energy saving ratio. Analytical results and simulation results are provided to investigate and validate the influence of the system parameters on the system performance. Finally, considering the trade-off between the average delay of data frames and the energy saving ratio, we develop a cost function to determine the optimal length of the sleep window in order to maximize the energy saving ratio while satisfying the Quality of Service (QoS) constraint on the average delay of data frames.