Enhanced Priority Load-Aware Scheduling Algorithm for Wireless Broadband Networks

WiMAX, one of the emerging wireless broadband networks, was designed to support traffic from applications with diverse QoS requirements. In WiMAX, an efficient resource management technique such as scheduling is required for the proper allocation of network resources to these data streams. This article proposes an enhanced priority load-aware scheduling (EPLAS) algorithm to improve the performance of WiMAX networks. The proposed scheme adaptively determines the weight of each queue based on the queue load. It also introduces a packet drop control mechanism that reduces the packet drop rate and increases the average throughput of the network by prioritizing packets with the earliest deadlines within each queue. The performance of EPLAS was evaluated against other benchmark schemes using several simulation experiments. The results revealed that EPLAS performed significantly better than the benchmark algorithms in terms of average delay, average packet drop ratio, and average throughput.