Adaptive Downlink and Uplink Channel Split Ratio Determination for TCP-Based Best Effort Traffic in TDD-Based WiMAX Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we study the determination of downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) channel split ratio for Time Division Duplex (TDD)-based IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX) wireless networks. In a TDD system, uplink and downlink transmissions share the same frequency at different time intervals. The TDD framing in WiMAX is adaptive in the sense that the downlink to uplink bandwidth ratio may vary with time. In this work, we focus on TCP based traffic and explore the impact of improper bandwidth allocation to DL and UL channels on the performance of TCP. We then propose an Adaptive Split Ratio (ASR) scheme which adjusts the bandwidth ratio of DL to UL adaptively according to the current traffic profile, wireless interference, and transport layer parameters, so as to maximize the aggregate throughput of TCP based traffic. Our scheme can also cooperate with the Base Station (BS) scheduler to throttle the TCP source when acknowledgements (ACKs) are transmitted infrequently. The performance of the proposed ASR scheme is validated via ns-2 simulations. The results show that our scheme outperforms static allocation (such as the default value specified in the WiMAX standard and other possible settings in existing access networks) in terms of higher aggregate throughput and better adaptivity to network dynamics.