A Review of Analytical Model for Hybrid PQ-WFQ Scheduling Scheme for WiMAX Networks
Daniel Ndiki ECE-249, Project Paper Review
Abstract—One of the most significant promises in today’s
integrated packet-switched broadband wireless
networks (such as WiMAX) is providing Quality of
Service (QoS) guarantees to data, voice and video
applications. Scheduling schemes are used to ensure
QoS guarantees for this wireless applications. Many
research efforts have been dedicated to performance
evaluation of traffic scheduling schemes. In this
paper, we present a discussion of on the Analytical
Model for Hybrid PQ-WFQ Scheduling Scheme for
WiMAX Networks using Markov Chains
I. INTRODUCTION
Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access
(WiMAX) is a part of IEEE 802.16[ CITATION 2005 \l
1033 ]1, [ CITATION 2008 \l 1033 ]2 family of broadband
wireless access (BWA) network standards for fixed and
mobile application. WiMAX networks, like other broadband
wireless access networks multiplex different applications,
e.g., voice, video or data that have different quality of
service (QoS) requirements. In such an environment, these
applications contend for resources such as bandwidth.
Scheduling schemes are used to resolve contention for these
shared resources by allocating resources to users and
determining their transmission priority, that is, a scheduler
allocates resources and establishes the order in which
information flows are served ensuring that QoS
requirements of each information packet are guaranteed.
A base station (BS) several mobile stations (MS) by
coordinating the communication in the downlink (DL) i.e.
communication from BS to SS, and uplink (UL) SS to BS.
The BS controls access to the media by providing resources
in form of slots to the SS [ CITATION Li2007 \l 1033 ]3,
[ CITATION Abdel-Hamid2009 \l 1033 ]4. The
management and control functionality including QoS and
bandwidth resource assignment is done at the MAC layer.
The MAC layer is connection oriented accommodating both
continuous and bursty traffic in order to support constant bit
rate, real-time variable bit rate and best effort traffic. The
standard makes it feasible to address QoS requirements by
defining five different QoS service classes: Unsolicited
grant services (UGS), Real time polling services (rtPS),
Extended real-time polling service (ErtPS), Non-real time
polling service (nrtPS), and Best effort service (BS).
Scheduling schemes architecture for WiMAX has not been
standardized and thus provide an important mechanism for
vendors to differentiate their equipment. The choice of a
scheduling algorithm will depend on its complexity and ease
of implementation.
WiMAX Scheduling architectures can broadly be
classified into four categories: These are Classical Schemes-
that utilize simple scheduling mechanism such as the ones
proposed for wired networks, ii) Hybrid scheduling schemes
that use a combination of classic scheduling algorithms iii)
1
Hierarchical Schemes – a two layer scheduling structure
that combines scheduling for UL and DL bandwidth
simultaneously and iv) Channel aware schemes –a
modification of wired networks schemes that attempt to
address WiMAX channel variability while addressing the
QoS requirements [ CITATION Ndiki2010 \l 1033 ]5.
Due to the varied QoS requirements of Applications that
transverses a WiMAX network, use of hybrid schemes i.e.
using two or more schemes is suggested [[ CITATION
Ndiki2010 \l 1033 ]5. The general idea is to differentiate
traffic based on QoS requirements and then individually
select a best-fit scheduling algorithm that can adequately
allocate bandwidth to individual traffic flows .i.e., different
scheduling algorithms tailored to the traffic requirement of
each Service Class. In a hierarchical scheme, a two-layer
approach is used to schedule traffic, where in the first layer,
scheduling algorithms separates and might give priority to
DL and UL traffic. In the second stage, classical or hybrid
schemes are used to schedule the various QoS Service
Classes. A number of hierarchical scheduling have been
proposed in the literature, [ CITATION Li2007 \l 1033 ]3,
[ CITATION Ndiki2010 \l 1033 ]5. Deficit Fair Priority
Queuing (DFPQ) is used in the first layer, together EDF,
WFQ and RR, Priority Queuing (PQ) and WFQ, and EDF ..
Our focus is on analytical work from [ CITATION
Wang2009 \l 1033 ]6 which present a three-dimensional
Markov Model for modeling PQ-WFQ hybrid scheduling
system applied to multiple non-bursty and busrty traffic.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
we describe PQ-WFQ, stating the requirements for different
applications. We describe the Markov model for modeling
PQ-WFQ with non-bursty traffic for different classes of
traffic flow in Section III and discuss its application to no-
busrty traffic modeled on Markov Modulated Poisson
Process (MMPP) in section IV. We discuss the results in
section V. Finally, we draw conclusion in Section VI.
II. PRE-EMPTIVE PRIORITY POLICY USING PPQ-
WFQ SCHEDULER
A scheduling scheme can be implemented either as Pre-
emptive priority- where the ongoing services is interrupted
whenever a higher priority packet enters the network or as
non-pre-emptive priority- where an arriving high priority
packet does not interrupt on on-going service to low priority
packet. Pre-emptive priority is further classified into i)
pre-emptive resume policy if the interrupted or pre-empted
packets can resume services from the point at which it was
interrupted, ii) pre-emptive repeat policy – when the service
interruption clears, the interrupted service repeats with the
same service period, and iii) pre-emptive but with different
repeat policy. In each of these pre-emptive policy, all lower
priority packets does not influence the stochastic lae of
higher priority process. Consequently, the presence of low
priority packets has no effect on traffic parameters such as
stationery distribution of the queue size or waiting time for (i,j,k) to (i-1,j,k),(i, j-1,k), (i, j, k-1) indicates service rate µ,
the higher priority packet flows. µ2, µ3 respectively from queue 1, 2 and 3. Queue 2 and
The discussion that follows focuses on pre-emptive queue 3 traffic are only scheduled if queue 1 traffic is empty
resume schemes using PQ scheduling for higher priority i.e. state from (0,j,k) to,(0, j-1,k) or ( 0, j,k-1) correspond to
packets while WFQ scheduling is used to scheduling lower service rates µ2, and µ3 for queue 2 and queue 3
priority packets as present in [ CITATION Wang2009 \l respectively. The marginal state probability Pi that I
ci
1033 ]6. Priority Queuing (PQ) assigns multiple queues
packets of class ci are in the queue are based on joint state
different priority levels. A queue with a higher priority is
probability pijk and is given by
always processed ahead of a queue with a lower priority.
Queue assigned the same priority are processed in a round-
robin fashion. Weighted Fair Queuing (WFQ) makes
reference to GPS, and assigns available bandwidth to traffic
queues based on weights. For example, it can assign more
weight to nrtPS and less to BE traffic packets since nrtPS
has higher priority. It has good bounded delay, can
guarantee throughput and observes fairness (ref). However,
the need to serially search among all the packets in the
queue makes it complex to implement.

III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

The authors consider a single server (possibly a single
Base Station (BS)) queuing system with a hybrid PQ-WFQ
scheduling system as shown in the fig. I. It has queues Qi, i
=1,2,3 and where traffic classes Ci access respectively. The
queues have priority such that traffic Qi > Qi+1, i = 1, 2, 3,
and each is bounded by a corresponding finite capacity Li.
Therefore, traffic class c1 has the highest priority and its
scheduled first using PQ. Pre-emptive priority also allows c1
Fig. 3: State Transition Diagram
to interrupt service for the other lower priority queues c2 and
c3. This is similar to UGS or ErtPS traffic class in WiMAX.
c2 and c3 are scheduled using WFQ, where c3 is assigned a
c1
lower weight w3- similar to a non-real time service such as
nrtPS or BE.
c2
Packets weights for each queue is fixed, all packets are
assumed to have the same size, and have the same inter-
c3
service time µ-1, so that traffic flow c =2,3 will achieve
average service flow µc= µwc/(w2+w3). Note that, a space in
the buffer can be released only after packet has been served
completely. The mean marginal number of packets in queue is given
by

At steady state, the marginal throughput Tc is given by

arrival rate multiplied by marginal probability

And from Little’s Law, the marginal queuing delay Dc is

Fig. 1: PQ-WFQ scheduling scheme with Poisson Arrivals.
The architecture is a PQ-WFQ scheduling process with
three class traffic is represented using the state transition
(i,j,k) (0≤ i ≤ L, 0≤ j ≤ L, 0≤ k ≤ L) corresponding to the
situation where there are i, j, k packets of the three classes
respectively. The corresponding transition rates are λ1, λ2, λ3
corresponding to i+1, j+1 and k+1 transition, where packets
from class 1, 2, and 3 arrives into the queue, while rate from
2
given by Lc/Tc. Its noted that, an arriving packet for class ci
can be dropped only if its full, and hence the packet loss
probability is equal to the marginal state probability that
there is no space available in the queue
While fairness for the two classes is given by Jain’s fair
index i.e.
.

3
 IV. MODEL WITH BURSTY TRAFFIC
To capture the effect of bursty traffic, the authors extend
the model so that the arrival process of high priority traffic
flow is modeled by a two-state MMPP as shown in fig. 2.
MMPP allows for the capture of traffic sources that are
bursty in nature by employing an auxiliary Markov process.
In MMPP, the current state of the Markov process controls
the probability distribution of the traffic. MMPP is a
Poisson process whose parameters are controlled by a
Markov process, that is, when the underlying Markov state
is at state i, (i = 1,2), the message arrive according to
Poisson process with rates λi. The MMPP is specified by a
infinitesimal generator matrix QMMPP and rate matrix Λ so
that [ CITATION Fang2003 \l 1033 ]7
QMMPP ¿
[−rr 10 −rr 01]
Λ=
[ λ01 λ02]
As illustrated, mean marginal throughput for class 2
and 3 traffic flow changes in inverse proportions with
respect to changes in weight ratio. Increased class 2 weight
ratio leads to increased queuing delay and packet loss for
class 3 (Fig 4-5), while fairness between class 2 and 3
increasing to a maximum when the weight ration is 60% and
thereafter decreases. There is no explanation given, but
seems to agree with [ CITATION Fang2003 \l 1033 ]7
where the mean packet delay increases rapidly when the
offered load reaches 65%.
Fig 6 traces the effect of class 1 burstiness on the
performance metrics for class 2 and 3, where as expected,
high burstiness reduces performance metrics including
fairness for class 2 and 3 traffic flow. Burstiness variation
is represented by the rate matrix fixed at
and then for the second part increased it to

where r0, r1 is the low and mean duration in the high

states of burstiness respectively.
The priority packet flow burstiness for class 1 traffic is while using the same infinitesimal generator QMMPP.
then captured by building a four dimensional Markov chains Correspondingly, there is no appreciable change as
on the two-three dimensional Markov chains proposed. The anticipated for class 1 traffic parameters.
transition between the corresponding states form one layer
to the other represent the transition of underlying Markov
chain in two-state MMPP. The steady state probability P
will have four dimensions including the added state, and
satisfies equations postulated in section III above. Joint
state probability pijks, the marginal state probability pic, and
other performance metric are calculated likewise.

V. RESULT ANALYSIS
The parameters used are set in table I and II. The
capacity of each queue and service rates µ are the same and
held constant. The weight ratio w 2/(w2+w3) which is varied
from 10% to 90% is compared to marginal performance
metrics such as mean marginal number of packets in queue,
throughput, mean queuing delay, packet loss probability and
fairness (fig. 3-7). Fig. 4 Mean Marginal Number of Packets in the Queue v/s
Weight Ratio

Fig. 5: Mean Marginal Delay v/s Weight Ratio

4
 V. CONCLUSION
The paper provides an analytical framework at the
performance of a hybrid scheduling scheme incorporating
PQ and WFQ schemes using a Markov models. The model
is extended to show the effect of traffic burstiness using a
four-dimensional MC- the result being that increased
burstiness degrades performance of lower priority class
traffic. However, since there is a set limit on the traffic for
each of the traffic classes, and the analysis does not show
the outcome of increasing arbitrary class 1 traffic.
Fig.6 Mean Marginal Queuing Delay v/s Weight Ratio for
Bursty Traffic
The paper does not mention whether the MAC
architecture in use is FDD or TDD, and on whether
this analysis was done for UL or DL- on the BS on
MS. For UL, a BS typically have sufficient
knowledge of the environment, where else it has to
rely the channel to interference and noise ratio (CINR)
information sent whenever the SS request bandwidth.
Similarly, the bursft profile assigned to an MS is based
on channel quality measurement provided by the SS to
the BS- all of which will affect the arrival and service
rates of the various traffic class flows.
WiMAX further to the PHY profile being
adaptive, it also utilizes dynamically architecture that
varies the resources assigned UL and DL sub-frame,
which the paper does not address, although one can
foresee a extension to the busrty MMPP model – in
this case, having 8 dimensions.
The class of high traffic flow that demands
enhanced QoS characteristics such as low delay, low
jitter etc are put in highest priority queues with the
lowest drop probability. However, as the downside of
these control measures is to it starve the performance
behavior of the rest of lower priority traffic flows, and
special consideration calls for an upper limit for the
rate, and burst size if appropriate, for these high
priority traffic. In this case, this is achieved by
defining queue limit, in other works, [ CITATION
Li2007 \l 1033 ]3, [ CITATION Ndiki2010 \l 1033 ] 5 an
admission control and packet classifier is suggested
that ensure that some classes of traffic flow such as
UGS are not subject to scheduling.
Similarly, low priority packets such as BE and
nrtPS have to contend for resources allocation by
sending random bandwidth requests (BW-REQ)
during the previous UL period [ CITATION Abdel-
Hamid2009 \l 1033 ]4. MS will collide if more than one
MS tries to access the same resources during the
contention process.
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