IEEE802.16/WiMAX-Based Broadband Wireless Networks: Protocol Engineering, Applications, and Services

IEEE 802.16/WiMAX-based broadband and mobile wireless access is expected to be a significant component in the next generation (e.g., beyond 3G, 4G) wireless systems. IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard, which incorporates several advanced radio transmission technologies such as orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), adaptive modulation and coding, and adaptive forward error correction (FEC), is designed to provide broadband wireless capability using a well-defined quality-of-service (QoS) framework. Therefore, this is a promising technology for wireless services requiring high- rate transmission (in the range of tens of Mbps) and strict QoS requirements in both indoor and outdoor environments. This technology is currently of big interest to researchers and practitioners involved in the design, analysis, installation, and management of mobile broadband wireless access systems and networks. The objective of this tutorial is to provide a complete overview on the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard and the current state-of-the-art research on the design, analysis, and optimization of IEEE802.16/WiMAX-based networks. The key technical challenges related to protocol engineering in these networks are described. The aim is to provide a survey on the emerging IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology rather than an in-depth study on a specific protocol engineering problem. An overview of the different evolutions of the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard broadband wireless access (BWA) is presented and the open research issues in protocol engineering (e.g., for radio resource management, mobility support, security) are identified. A comprehensive survey on radio resource management, traffic scheduling, admission control, mobility management, and security mechanisms for IEEE 802.16/WiMAX are provided. A comparative performance study among the third-generation (3G) and the IEEE 802.16-based systems is provided. Several applications (e.g., wireless telemedicine and e-health services), services and deployment scenarios are described and the necessary protocol design and engineering issues are outlined.