Connection Admission Control Schemes for Quality

of Service in IEEE 802.16 Networks

Said EL KAFHALI,

Abdelali EL BOUCHTI, Mohamed HANINI and Abdelkrim HAQIQ

Computer, Networks, Mobility and Modeling laboratory

e- NGN research group, Africa and Middle East
FST, Hassan 1st University, Settat, Morocco
Emails: {kafhalisaid, a.elbouchti, haninimohamed, ahaqiq}@gmail.com

Abstract In this paper, we consider a system where the

subchannels allocated to a subscriber station by a base station in
a single-cell IEEE 802.16. The subchannels allocated to a
subscriber station are shared by multiple connections at that
subscriber station. To ensure the Quality of Service (QoS)
performances, two Connection Admission Control (CAC)
mechanisms are considered. A queuing analytical framework for
these admission control mechanisms is presented. Then, based on
the queuing model, both the connection-level and the packet-level
performances are studied and compared with their analogues in
the case without CAC. The connection arrival is modeled by a
Poisson process and the packet arrival for a connection by
different arrival process (Poisson process, Markov Modulated
Poisson Process (MMPP) and Batch Markov Arrival Process
(BMAP)). Numerical results of QoS performances are presented
and compared for the two studied CAC.
Keywords-component: IEEE 802.16/WiMAX, OFDMA, Queuing
Theory, Quality of Service Performances.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The main objective of next-generation wireless networks is

to accommodate the increasing user demand and to achieve a
ubiquitous high-data-rate coverage, so that mobile broadband
services comparable to those of the wirelines are realized in a
cost-efficient manner. IEEE 802.16 is a wireless broadband
technology designed to enable pervasive, high-speed mobile
internet access to a very large coverage area [1, 2]. The basic
IEEE 802.16 architecture consists of one Base Station (BS)
and one (or more) Subscriber Station (SS). BS acts as a central
entity to transfer all the data from SSs in a PMP (Point to
multipoint) mode. Transmissions take place through two
independent channels: Downlink Channel (from BS to SS) and
Uplink Channel (from SS to BS). Uplink Channel is shared
between all SSs while Downlink Channel is used only by BS.
The standard defines both Time Division Duplexing (TDD)
and Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) for channel
allocation.
The 802.16 protocol supports five of QoS service classes.
Namely: Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS) for VoIP without
silence suppression, real-time Polling Service (rtPS) for video
streaming, non real-time Polling Service (nrtPS) for file
downloading, extended real-time Polling Service (ertPS)

tailored for applications with time varying bandwidth

requirements, and finally Best Effort Service (BE) for web and
mailing applications.
OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access)
has been adopted as the physical layer transmission
technology for WiMAX [15]. Although the WiMAX standard
[3] defines the physical layer specifications and the Medium
Access Control (MAC) signaling mechanisms, the radio
resource management methods such as those for CAC and
dynamic bandwidth adaptation are left open. However, to
guarantee QoS performances (e.g., call blocking rate, packet
loss, and delay), efficient admission control is necessary in a
WiMAX network [14] at both the subscriber and the base
stations. More sophisticated admission control algorithms
respect the QoS requirements of the connections in terms of
performance parameters and other network characteristics in
order to provide a more reliable service to the end users [6, 7,
8 and 12].
IEEE 802.16 has a connection-oriented Medium Access
Control (MAC) protocol [3]. In the connection-oriented
systems, the CAC mechanism deals with the arrival of a new
call. CAC determines whether the system accepts a new
connection or not. Before the decision, CAC should confirm
that the new call does not degrade the QoS of current
connections and the system can provide the QoS requirements
of the new call [10].
Previous researchers in an attempt to address call admission
control problem in WiMAX employed complete sharing (CS)
CAC scheme, in which the BS accepts connection requests
and allocates available bandwidth resource equally without
considering the QoS requirements of each connection request
[9].
In this paper we consider a system where the subchannels
allocated to a subscriber station by a base station in a singlecell IEEE 802.16 are shared by multiple connections at that
subscriber station. To ensure the Quality of Service (QoS)
performances, two Connection Admission Control (CAC)
mechanisms are considered. A queuing analytical framework
for these admission control mechanisms is presented. Then,
both the connection-level and the packet-level performances

are studied and compared with their analogues in the case

without CAC.
Mathematical models and numerical results are presented
and compared for the two studied CAC, and a proposal to
improve the models taking into account the differentiation
between classs connections is proposed for future analysis.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II describes the system model including the objective of CAC
policy. The formulation of the mathematical analysis is
presented in Section III. In section IV we determine
analytically different performance parameters. Numerical
results are stated in Section V. Finally, conclusion and future
works presented in section VI.
II.

SYSTEM MODEL DESCRIPTION

A. System Model
We consider a single cell in a IEEE 802.16/WiMAX
network with a base station and multiple subscriber stations
(Figure 1). Each subscriber station serves multiple connections.
Admission control is used at each subscriber station to limit the
number of ongoing connections through that subscriber station.
At each subscriber station, traffic from all uplink connections
are aggregated into a single queue [13]. The size of this queue
is finite (i.e., X packets) in which some packets will be dropped
if the queue is full upon their arrivals. The OFDMA transmitter
at the subscriber station retrieves the head of line packet(s) and
transmits them to the base station. The base station may
allocate different number of subchannels to different subscriber
stations. For example, a subscriber station with higher priority
could be allocated more number of subchannels.

B.2. Queue-Aware CAC mechanism

This mechanism works based on connection acceptance
probability x which is determined based on the queue status.
Specifically, when a connection arrives, the CAC module
accepts the connection with probability x , where

x ( x {0,1,..., X }) is the number of packets in the queue in

the current time slot. Here, X denotes the size of the queue of
the subscriber station under consideration. Note that the value
of the parameter x can be chosen based on the radio link level
performance (e.g., packet delay, packet dropping probability)
requirements.
III.

MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS

An analytical model based on DTMC (Discret Time

Markovian Chain) is presented to analyze the system
performances at both the connection-level and at the packetlevel for the connection admission [4, 5, and 11] mechanisms
described before. We have studied three models using different
traffic arrival models.
1- The connection arrival is modeled by a Poisson process
and the packet arrival for a connection by a two-state
Markov Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP) [6].
2- The connection arrival is modeled by a Poisson process
and the packet arrival for a connection by a Markov
Modulated Poisson Process (MMPP) with n phases [7].
3- The connection arrival is modeled by a Poisson process
and the packet arrival for a connection by Batch Markov
Arrival Process (BMAP) [8].
In this paper, we reuse the formulation of the third analytical
model. For more details, see [8].
The state of the system is described by the
process Yt ( St , X t , Ct ) , where St is the state (phase) of an
irreducible continuous time Markov chain of BMAP process,
X t is the number of packets in the aggregated queue and

Ct the number of ongoing connections at the end of every time

Figure 1: System Model

B. CAC policy
The following CAC mechanisms for subscriber stations are
proposed.
B.1. Threshold-Based CAC mechanism
In this case, a threshold C is used to limit the number of
ongoing connections. When a new connection arrives, the CAC
module checks whether the total number of connections
including the incoming one is less than or equal to the
threshold C. If it is true, then the new connection is accepted,
otherwise it is rejected.

slot t.
Thus, the state space of the system for both the CAC
mechanisms is given by:
(1)
E {( s, x, c ) / s {1,...., S }, 0 x X , c 0}
For the both CAC algorithms, the number of packet arrivals
depends on the number of connections. However, for the
queue-aware CAC algorithm, the number of packets in the
queue affects the acceptance probability for a new connection.
1-The transition matrix for the number of connections in the
system ( Q for Threshold-Based CAC and Qx for QueueAware CAC):
q 0,0 q 0 ,1

q 0,1 q 1,1 q 1,2

Q

q C 2, C 1 q C 1,C 1

q C 1,C

q ( x) q ( x)

( x) ( x) ( x)

q q q
, Qx
(x)
(x)
( x)

q q q
q C 1, C

q C , C
0 ,0

0 ,1

1 ,0

1,1

1,2

2 ,0

2 ,1

2 ,2

(2)

2- The transition matrix P of the entire system which can be

expressed as in equation 3. The rows of matrix P represent the
number of packets (x) in the queue.

 p 0 ,0

p R ,0
P

p0,A

p R ,R p R ,R A

p x,x R p x,x

p x,x R

block

N tb
c

in the queue (i.e., the number of packets in the queue changing

from x in the current frame to x in the next frame).
3-The matrices px , x ' are obtained by combining both the

N qa
c

px , x ' Qv ( s , x ),( s , x ')

The diagonal elements are given in the following equations:

v ( s , x );( s , x m ) c , c
v ( s , x ); ( s , x ) c , c

f n (( c 1) D k , ss ' )[ R ] r

n r l k 1 s ' 0

f n (( c 1) D k , ss ' )[ R ]r

(6)

r n m k 1 s ' 0

N qa
x

(5)

Where the matrices v ( s , x ),( s , x ') are defined as follow:

f n (( c 1) D k , ss ' )[ R ] r

Note that, matrix R [12] has size 1 R + 1, where R indicates

the maximum number of packets that can be transmitted in one
frame. Here, A is the maximum number of packets that can
arrive from one connection in one frame and L is the
maximum number of packets that can be transmitted in one
frame by all of the allocated sub channels allocated to that
particular queue and it can be obtained from L min (R, x) .
This is due to the fact that the maximum number of
transmitted packets depends on the number of packets in the
queue and the maximum possible number of transmissions in
one frame. Note that, v( s, x );( s, xl )
, v( s, x );( s, xm) and
c ,c

v( s, x);( s, x) c,c represent the probability that the number of packets

in the queue increases by l, decreases by m, and does not
change, respectively, when there are c-1 ongoing connections.
Here, v denotes the element at row i and column j of matrix
i, j

v, and these elements are obtained based on the assumption

that the packet arrivals for the ongoing connections are
independent of each other.
IV.

(9)

s 1 x 0 c 0
S

C tr

c . ( s , x , c )
S

(10)

x . ( s , x , c )

(11)

s 1 x 0 x 0
S

C tr

x . ( s , x , c )

(12)

s 1 x 0 x 0

p drop

For r {0,1, 2,..., L} and n {0,1, 2,..., (c A)}, l 1, 2,..., L , and

m 1,2,...,(c A) .
The non-diagonal elements of v ( s , x ),( s , x ') are all zero.

D. Packet Dropping Probability

The average number of dropped packets per frame is
obtained as follows [8]:
S C X
A
C

Ndrop [ px,xm ]c,l .(m ( X x)). (s, x, c) (13)

s0 c1 x0 m X x1 l 1
After calculating the average number of dropped packets per
frame, we can obtain the probability that an incoming packet is
dropped as follows:

r n k 1 s ' 0

c,c

s 1 x 0 c 0

N tb

(4)

px , x ' Qx v ( s , x ),( s , x ')

c . ( s , x , c )

C. Average Queue Length Average

connection-level and the queue-level transitions as follows:

v ( s , x );( s , x l ) c , c

(8)

s 1 x 0 c 1

B. Average Number of Ongoing Connections

px , x ' represent the changes in the number of packets

Matrices

Ctr

p qa ((1 x ). ( s , x , C ))

(3)

where

N drop

(14)

is the average number of packet arrivals per frame.

E. Queue throughput
BMAP (1 pdrop )

(15)

F. Average Packet Delay

We use Littles law [11] to obtain average delay as follows:
N
(16)
D x

V.

NUMERICAL RESULTS

The numerical results are similar in the three models. Here

we present the results for the third model (where BMAP
model is used).
A. Performance of CAC policy
Variations in average number of ongoing connections and
connection blocking probability with connection arrival rate are
shown in Figure 2.When the connection arrival rate increases,
the number of ongoing connections and connection blocking
probability increase.

PERFORMANCE PARAMETERS

All of the above performance parameters can be derived

from the steady state probability vector of the system states ,
which is obtained by solving P and 1 1 . The
parameters are given for the two mechanisms (threshold-based
(tb) and Queue-aware (qa)).
A. Connection Blocking Probability

p tb
block

( s, x, C )
s 1 x 0

(7)
Figure 2: Average number of ongoing connections and
connection blocking under different connection arrival rates.

B. Packet-level performances
The packet-level performances under different connection
arrival rates are shown in Figures 3 and 4 for average number
of packets in the queue, packet dropping probability, queue
throughput, and average queueing delay, respectively. These
performance parameters are significantly impacted by the
connection arrival rate. Because the CAC scheme limits the
number of ongoing connections, packet-level performances can
be maintained at the target level. In this case, the CAC scheme
results in better packet-level performances compared with
those without CAC scheme.

numerically different performance parameters, such as

connection blocking probability, average number of
ongoing connections, average queue length, packet
dropping probability, queue throughput, and average packet
delay.
All the results showed in this paper remain in
correlation with those presented in [6], [7], [8] and [12]
even if we change here the arrival packet Poisson process
by an MMPP process or by BMAP process, which is more
realistic.
As future work, we will present the problem of queueing
theoretic of OFDMA-based WiMAX with two classes of
connections, connections with Higher Priority and
connections with Lower Priority under CAC schemes and
we will study analytically and numerically all performance
parameters of both classes.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

Figure 3: Average number of packets in queue and packet

dropping under different connection arrival rates.

[4]
[5]
[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

Figure 4: Queueing throughput and average packet delay under

different connection arrival rates.
VI.

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

WiMAX network is equipped with mechanisms to

deliver guaranteed QoS, and CAC is an important part of
WiMAX design that contributes to improve QoS.
In this paper, we have considered two CAC mechanisms
for a multi-channel and multi-user OFDMA/WiMAX
network. A queuing analytical framework for these
admission control mechanisms is presented. Then, both the
connection-level and the packet-level performances are
studied and compared with their analogues in the case
without CAC.
The connection-level and packet-level performances of
the both CAC mechanisms have been studied based on the
queuing model. The connection arrival is modeled by a
Poisson process and the packet arrival for a connection by
different arrival process (Poisson process, MMPP process
and BMAP process). We have determined analytically and

[10]

[11]
[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

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