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1, October 2011 12
A Survey on Technical
Issues in IEEE 802.16j
Mobile Multi-hop Relay
Networks
D. Satish Kumar1 and N. Nagarajan2
1
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Anna University of Technology Coimbatore, Coimbatore,
Tamil Nadu 641047, India / satishcoimbatore@yahoo.co.in
2
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of Engineering and Technology,
Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu- 641109, India / swekalnag@gmail.com
Received June 27, 2011; Revised September 2, 2011; Accepted September 11, 2011; Published October 31, 2011
Abstract: In this paper, we have conducted a detailed survey on relay technologies for IEEE
802.16j mobile multi-hop relay networks, such as relay modes, relay transmission schemes, and
relay pairing schemes. We have also conducted a detailed survey about the technical issues in the
physical layer, medium access control-common part sub layer, and medium access control-security
sub layer of IEEE 802.16j mobile multi hop relay networks. Technical issues such as data
forwarding schemes, frame structure for transparent and non-transparent relay mode, link
adaptation, modulation, and coding, belong to the physical layer. Other technical issues such as
quality of service-scheduling services, bandwidth allocation and request, network planning,
medium access control handover procedures, connection management, path management, and
interference management belong to the medium access control- common part sub layer. Centralized
security control and distributed security control belong to the medium access control--security sub
layer. In this paper, we have also given how to integrated IEEE 802.16j (worldwide interoperability
for microwave access) with IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi).
Keywords: IEEE 802.16j, physical layer, common part sub layer, security sub layer, relay
technologies, Wi-Fi.
This research was supported by Networks Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Coimbatore Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu- 641109 INDIA.
DOI: 10.6029/smartcr.2011.01.002
Smart Computing Review, vol. 1, no. 1, October 2011 13
Introduction
W ireless systems that achieve high speed mobile wireless access services can be divided into two groups. The first
group is the International Mobile telecommunications-2000, which includes wideband code division multiple
access, high speed downlink packet access, high speed uplink packet access, High speed packet access plus, LTE/LTE-
advanced specified by 3rd generation partnership project, code division multiple access 2000 1x and ultra mobile
broadband specified by 3rd generation partnership project-2. The second group consists of IEEE 802.16e, IEEE 802.16j,
and the IEEE 802.16m standard specified by the IEEE 802.16 committee.
The second group is also called the worldwide interoperability for Microwave access (WiMAX) standard and is one of
the 4th generation telecommunication technologies that supply wireless communication of data through different
transmission links like point to multi point. Two groups that play a role in the development of IEEE 802.16j standard are
the IEEE 802.16 working group on Broadband wireless Access standard, which develops standards and recommends
practices to support the development of broadband Wireless metropolitan area networks, while the second group is the
worldwide interoperability for Microwave access forum, which certifies and promotes broadband wireless products based
on the IEEE 802.16 standard. There are several IEEE 802.16 standards including the IEEE 802.16a standard that is used in
the license and license exempted frequencies of 2-11 GHz and supports mesh topology in which transceivers can pass a
single communication on to other transceivers; the IEEE 802.16b supports the 5-6Ghz frequency band and supports quality
of service; the IEEE 802.16c represents a 10-66 GHz band and supports more consistency and interoperability; the IEEE
802.16b that is an amendment to IEEE 802.16a and creates system profiles for compliance testing of 802.16a devices; the
IEEE 802.16e enables the high-speed signal handoffs necessary for communications with users moving at vehicular speeds;
and the IEEE 802.16j which is an amendment to IEEE 802.16e as explained below.
The new task group IEEE 802.16j-2009 standard [1] of IEEE 802.16 air interface for broadband wireless access was
officially established in March 2006. In order to support the mobile multi-hop relay specification, mesh mode is removed
from the IEEE 802.16 -2009 standard. The specification is an amendment of the IEEE 802.16e standard for achieving
throughput enhancement and coverage extension. It provides multi hop wireless connectivity where traffic between a base
station and a subscriber station can be relayed through a relay station. This system enables mobile stations to communicate
with a base station through an intermediate relay station. Multihop relay station is an optional deployment that may be used
to provide additional coverage or performance advantage in an access network. The Relay Station may be fixed in location
or, in the case of an access relay station, may be mobile access Relay Station. Most of the time, the relay station will act as
a base station and will have its own physical cell identifier, and it should be able to transmit its own synchronization
channels and control information. There should be no difference between cell control in there lay station and base station.
The radio link originating or terminating at a mobile station is named as access link and the link between the base
station and relay station or between a pair of relay stations is called as relay link. The access link and relay link can be used
for uplink and downlink data transmission. This standard defines the physical and the medium access control layer
14 Kumar et al.: A Survey on Technical Issues in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multihop relay networks
specifications for mobile multihop relay networks. The medium access control layer supports functions such as network
entry, bandwidth request, and forwarding of data units, connection management, and hand over. The Physical layer adopts
orthogonal frequency division multiple access as the primary channel access mechanism for non-line of sight
communications in the frequency band below 11 GHz. Where multiple users are allocated separate set of slots, so that they
can communicate in parallel. It supports point to multipoint network topology where resource allocation is performed by
the base station on a per connection basis, and the subscriber stations are treated equally. Multiple input multiple output
techniques have the ability to exploit non loss of sight channels and increase spectral efficiency compared to single input
single output systems. Those techniques are able to provide high capacity and data rate without increasing bandwidth. The
gain of multiple input multiple output includes multiplexing gains, diversity gains, and array gains.
The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the technical issues in IEEE 802.16j mobile multi-hop relay networks.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section I, we briefly recapitulate the different relay technologies in IEEE
802.16j mobile multi-hop relay networks such as relay modes, relay transmission schemes, relay pairing schemes, and relay
techniques. In section II we briefly discuss the different technical issues in the physical layer of IEEE 802.16j mobile multi-
hop relay networks and present a study of the advantages of the different physical layer technical issues. This is followed in
section III by a brief discussion about the different technical issues in the medium access control-common part sub layer of
the IEEE 802.16j mobile multi-hop relay networks and their relevancy. We have also given how to integrated IEEE 802.16j
(worldwide interoperability for microwave access) with IEEE 802.11(Wi-Fi) in this section. In section IV, we briefly
discuss the different technical issues in the Medium Access Control--Security Sub layer of the IEEE 802.16j mobile multi-
hop relay networks. Conclusions are drawn in Section V.
WiMAX Forum
The Worldwide interoperability for microwave access forum was established in 2003 to promote the deployment of
worldwide interoperability for microwave access as a broadband wireless access technology. It initiated several technical
specifications and allowed the certification of worldwide interoperability for microwave access products. The network
specification involves interaction with other standard organization and includes internet engineering task Force, 3rd
generation partnership project, 3rd generation partnership project 2, digital subscriber line forum, and open mobile alliance.
Relay Modes
Smart Computing Review, vol. 1, no. 1, October 2011 15
Two different relay modes are defined in this IEEE 802.16j standard, the transparent mode and the non- transparent mode.
(a) Transparent relay mode: Transparent relay mode increases the throughput as shown in Figure 2, and thus facilities
capacity increases within the base station coverage area. It does not support coverage extension because it does not forward
framing information to the base station. It is operated in two hop network topology and supports centralized scheduling
only as scheduling is done in Base Station. Transparent relay mode uses the channel ID based forwarding scheme and
supports embedded and explicit mode of path management. (b) Non-Transparent relay mode : The non transparent relay
mode, as shown in Figure 3, increases the coverage extension of the base station. In this mode the relay station generates its
own framing information and forwards it to the mobile stations or subscriber stations. It operates in two or more hops and
uses centralized or distributed scheduling mode, as scheduling is done in the base station and relay stations. It uses the
channel ID and tunnel based forwarding scheme and supports embedded and explicit mode of path management.
The transparent relay station does not transmit control messages, permeable, frame control header, and Downlink /
Uplink MAP, as it only increases the system throughput. The non transparent relay station transmits control messages,
permeable, frame control header, and Downlink / Uplink MAP, as it increases the system throughput and increases cell
coverage. Table 1 shows the difference between the transparent and non transparent mode of operation.
forwarded to the mobile stations or base station in the second phase. This scheme avoids error propagation through the
channel. In the demodulation and forward scheme, the relay receives a signal from the base station or mobile stations in the
first phase and demodulates the signal without decoding, and it then modulates and forwards it to the subscriber stations or
base station in the second phase.
Relay Placement
By deploying the relay stations in lower signal to noise ration cell boundary area, the system capacity, throughput per user,
and the system reliability can be enhanced. The relay placement is formulated as an optimization problem and solved by an
iterative algorithm, under the assumption that mobile stations distribution is uniform. In some cases, large geographic areas
under non-uniformly distributed traffic demand are considered. The locations of base stations are determined in the first
stage of network deployment. A relay station location algorithm is designed to locate the relay stations.
Relaying Techniques
The Relaying techniques include the conventional techniques (i) time domain relaying, (ii) frequency domain relaying, (iii)
hybrid time/frequency domain relaying, and the current technique, which is of interest among the research community, is
(iv) co-operative technique. In the time domain relaying scheme, relays access the medium in time multiplex. The resources
are further divided in time in either the downlink or uplink to allow the relay station to receive and transmit data. In
frequency domain relaying, the relays operate on different frequency channels. The main advantage of this scheme is that
relays can transmit and receive data simultaneously. In the hybrid time/frequency domain relaying, relays operate
periodically on different frequency channels to forward data. The idea here is to switch between two frequencies in order to
allow the base station to transmit to its client while the relay is forwarding data on another frequency. The co-operative
technique can significantly enhance the performance of relay based systems via multiple relay stations cooperatively
transmitting the same data to a mobile station or the base station, i.e., in the downlink or uplink. This leads to similar
benefits to those of multiple input multiple output systems with transmit/receive diversity and spatial multiplexing
between a given transmitter-receiver pair and/or improve the reliability of the link. Using multiple antennas can improve
the achievable rates of users in the network with given frequency. As the multiple input multiple output technology matures,
it is expected that multiple input multiple output will be widely used for wireless communication. For the next generation
worldwide interoperability for microwave access, a system is to support at least up to 8 transmit antennas at the base station,
4 streams, and space-time coding. Multiple input multiple output futures such as closed-loop input multiple output will be
included in future Worldwide interoperability for Microwave access; more specifically, it has been already decided to
support closed-loop multiple input multiple output using channel quality information, precoding matrix index, and rank
feedback in future systems.
Multiple input multiple output techniques include the single user-multiple input multiple output, multi user-multiple
input multiple output, and cooperative multiple input multiple output. The adoption of multiple input multiple output
techniques often requires a tight design integration of physical, medium access control, and higher layers of IEEE 802.16j.
The key multiple input multiple output techniques are open-loop transmit diversity in downlink, open-loop spatial
multiplexing in downlink, open-loop transmit diversity in uplink, and open-loop spatial multiplexing in uplink,
Collaborative spatial multiplexing in uplink, adaptive beam forming, closed-loop antenna grouping/selection, Closed-loop
codebook-based pre-coding. These above features are included in releases 1.0 and 1.5 of worldwide interoperability for
microwave access forum. In single user-multiple input multiple output, the transmitter and receiver are equipped with m
and n antennas. The channel is Rayleigh or rician fading channel. Based on the full or partial availability of channel state
information to receiver and transmitter single user-multiple input multiple output is classified into open loop-single user,
multiple input multiple output, and closed loop-multiple input multiple output. Open loop-single user-multiple input
multiple output systems are more desirable in mobility applications because they do not require channel state information
as 802.16e support mobility of up to 120 km/h. 802.16e adopts space-time coding as the main open-loop multiple input
multiple output scheme. Space-time coding is supported by both the uplink and downlink, for up to four transmit antennas,
and for a multiplexing rate up to 4. The space-time coding option achieves low complexity decoding, while others are
optimized for high complexity decoding. Cyclic delay diversity is another open-loop scheme. Too much cyclic delay
diversity delay may reduce the receivers channel estimation accuracy due to the augmented frequency fluctuation. Closed-
loop single user - multiple input multiple output can achieve better performance than open-loop systems. Multi user
multiple input multiple outputs allows multiple subscriber stations to spatially share the same time-frequency resource to
improve both the cell spectral efficiency and average user experience. In distributed-multiple input multiple output and
relay in IEEE 802.16j the base stations, relay stations, and subscriber stations, a distributed multiple input multiple output
system is formed with all the transmit antennas of base stations and relay stations on one side and the receive antennas of
the destination subscriber stations on the other side. New multiple input multiple output techniques are open-loop multiuser
multiple input multiple output, and collaborative multicell multiple input multiple output. In the multicell multiple input
multiple output, multiple base stations collaborate to serve multiple subscriber stations in the edge region of the base
stations cell. A preceding entity in the network backhaul will decide the precoding vectors used for all subscriber stations in
18 Kumar et al.: A Survey on Technical Issues in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multihop relay networks
all base stations. The multicell multiple input multiple output system has the potential to eliminate dominant intercell
interferences, while offering multiplexing rate and diversity gain.
interoperability for microwave access systems is able to flexibly adjust the modulation and power scheme for individual
subscriber stations depending on the radio conditions. Four modulation schemes are defined in burst profiles to suit
different signal to noise ratio situations: Binary phase shift keying, quadrature phase shift keying, 16 quadrature amplitude
modulation, and 64 quadrature amplitude modulation. Some other techniques and technologies, such as forward error
correction, multiple input multiple output antennas, adaptive antenna systems, and automatic repeat request are also defined
to improve performance.
parameters. In this scheme, the station adds a relay medium access control header to a packet indicating the Channel ID of
the tunnel the packet should traverse. It operates in both centralized and distributed scheduling. The Channel ID based data
forwarding scheme has no tunnels and does not support traffic aggregation; it only supports legacy management and
transport connections. In this scheme, the channel ID of the designation is used by the packets. It operates in both
centralized and distributed scheduling. In centralized scheduling, the base stations send messages to the relay stations
describing the relay link characteristics; however, in distributed scheduling, the relay stations have the knowledge of
quality of service requirements of each connection.
Tunneling
A tunnel connection is a unidirectional connection between the base station and relay stations established to aggregate
management and transport traffic. To identify the tunnel service flow identifier, a tunnel connection identifier and
management tunnel identifier are used. The transport and management tunneling mechanism is used in IEEE 802.16j
mobile multi-hop relay networks. Two different protocol data unit construction methods, namely encapsulation mode and
burst mode, are used in relay system. (a) Management tunneling: Three different management tunnels are established
between relay station and base station including the basic management tunnel, primary management tunnel, and secondary
management tunnel. Management messages are transmitted through the tunnel connection. (b) Transport tunneling: A
tunnel connection for each quality of service requirement such as quality of service requirement 1, quality of service
requirement 2, quality of service requirement 3, , quality of service requirement n is created between the
SS1,SS2,SS3,..SSn to base stations. A separate connection for new service flow is created between SS1, SS2, SS3, ,
SSn to the base stations. Here, the intermediate relay stations will ignore the quality of service parameter of the individual
service flow. (SSs= subscriber stations)
Link Adaptation
Link adaptation is a technique for adapting the system parameters to radio link conditions such as available power level,
channel path-loss, signal interference, and sensitivity. It is also known as the adaptive modulation and coding scheme. The
parameters that can vary include symbol rate, modulation schemes, data transmission rate, data size, and coding parameters.
Data rate and the transmit power are two parameters for calculating the network energy, variable-rate variable-power
adaptation techniques. Dynamically adjusting the transmission parameters leads to various adaptive techniques. The
channel coding procedures defined in IEEE 802.16j are randomization, forward error collection encoding, bit interleaving,
repetition, and modulation.
Sub Channelization
Logical collection of subcarriers forms a sub-channel, composed of either contiguous subcarriers or sub-carriers distributed
throughout the entire physical channel. The mapping of logical sub-channels to physical subcarriers is called permutation.
The number of distribution of the sub-carriers is dependent on the sub-carrier permutation scheme. According to the
subcarrier permutation, an orthogonal Frequency division multiple access slot is equivalent to 48 subcarriers. An
orthogonal frequency division multiple access slot depends on the orthogonal frequency division multiple access symbol
structure, which varies with subcarrier permutation.
connection identifier. Each of the subscriber stations has a 48-bit medium access control address, but this serves mainly as
an equipment identifier, since the primary addresses used during operation are the channel IDs. The medium access control
protocol data units are exchanged between the base station and mobile station, and each of the medium access control
protocol data units consists of fixed length medium access control header, variable length payload, and cyclic redundancy
check. Medium access control defines two header formats, namely the generic header and bandwidth request header, which
are followed by three types of medium access control sub headers including the grand management sub header,
fragmentation sub header, and packing sub header. An important functionality of medium access control common part sub
layer is quality of service. To ensure quality of service bandwidth request, grand schemes are defined to allocate bandwidth
in a frame to frame basis. There are two classes of base stations to allocate Bandwidth. One per connection called grand per
connection, and one per subscriber station called grand per subscriber Station. The grand per subscriber Station is
recommended by the IEEE 802.16j committee.
of service requirements of the different service classes. Channel-aware approaches, on the other hand, try to take advantage
of the channel condition in order to maximize the system throughput. Two quality of service issues are service flow and
Bandwidth request. A service flow is defined as a one-way flow of medium access control service data units on a
connection associated with specific quality of service parameters such as latency, jitter, and throughput. There are three
basic types of service flows: provisioned service flows, admitted service flows, and active service flows. The Provisional
service flow is defined in the system with an SFID; it might not have any traffic presence. In admitted service flow based
on the external request from the specified service, the available bandwidth in admitted. In active service flow a service flow
will be activated when all the checks are completed and the resources are allocated. In order to ensure quality of service for
various service classes, a quality of service architecture, as shown in Figure 8, including several medium access control
mechanisms is defined. Two schedulers at the base station, one for downlink and one for uplink, and one scheduler at the
subscriber station for uplink are used. At the base station, downlink scheduler is defined to handle packets from the upper
layer, and each of these packets is put into different queues corresponding to specific downlink connections, which are
managed based on their quality of service requirement by the base station-downlink scheduler. The uplink base station
scheduler allocates resources in the uplink based on the bandwidth received from the subscriber stations. The subscriber
station-uplink scheduler manages the bandwidth requests and the data in different queues, the connections based on the
granted resources from the base station, and quality of service requirements of each connection. Unsolicited grand service
is designed to support constant bit rate traffic such as leased line digital connection and Voice over IP. There is no request
or poll in unsolicited grand service as it provides fixed size transmission at regular intervals. The real time polling service is
designed to support variable bit rate traffic such as MPEG video. Here, the base station allocates bandwidth periodically to
subscriber station based on the periodic request from subscriber stations. Non-real time polling service is for delay tolerant
service with minimum data rate such as file transfer protocol. It allows for contention request and unicast request
opportunities for bandwidth request. Best-effort service does not provide any service related requirements. Similar to the
non real time polling service, it allows for contention request and unicast request opportunities for bandwidth request. The
extended real time polling service builds on the efficiencies of both unsolicited grand service and real time polling service.
It is able to offer unsolicited grand service as in unsolicited grand service, but the size of the bandwidth allocation here is
dynamic.
the bandwidth requests are transmitted during the contention period defined in the uplink sub-frame. When collusion occurs
among bandwidth requests from different Subscriber Stations, a random back off mechanism is used. In the polling based
approach, on the other hand, the subscriber stations are allowed to transmit their bandwidth requests only when polled by
the base stations.
Network Planning
IEEE 802.16j for network planning consists of two propagation models including suitable, free space model and SUI model.
The free space model is applied to open space with no obstacles and is considered the standard model. The SUI (Stanford
Smart Computing Review, vol. 1, no. 1, October 2011 25
University Interim) model is valid for radio propagation within the 23 GHz range and has different parameter settings for
urban, suburban, and rural scenarios. It was developed by Stanford University Interim for the multipoint microwave
distribution system. The Stanford University Interim model was chosen to be used because it was accepted by the IEEE
802.16 standard body and achieves good compromise between simplicity and accuracy. Relay placement is one of the
major technical issues in IEEE 802.16j networks. A relay station of equal capacity as base station has smaller coverage area
and lower cost. There will be a cost tradeoff between relay station and base stations when they are deployed. Achievable
data rate and maximizing the throughput are some of the variables to be considered in network deployment. A better signal
to noise ratio can be achievable when the link is broken to smaller links through relay stations. There will be minimum two
hops in this transmission using relay stations.
of Mobile Station and Base Station. Other criteria such as bit error rate, packet delay/jitter, service pricing, mobile station
velocity, and mobile station location can also be used.
Connection Management
Network Topology Acquisition
Network Topology acquisition, as shown in Figure 15, can be achieved in three steps
Step 1: Advertisement of Network Topology
Step 2: Scanning of Base stations
Step 3: Acquire Ranging parameters
We have studied the process of network Topology acquisition by setting the channel ID and time of accepting mobile
station by a corresponding base station. In network topology advertisement, a base station broad casts information
regarding the network topology. In the scanning period, the Base station can allocate time intervals to the mobile station to
identify it. During this period, the mobile station may attempt to synchronize with its downlink transmission and estimate
the quality of physical channel. This total period is called the scanning interval. In the third step, the mobile station is
enabled to acquire and record ranging parameters and service availability information of the base station. We have split the
network Topology acquisition process into three steps. In the first step, the mobile stations within the coverage area of base
station are accepted first, i.e., the base station accepts all mobile stations that are inside its coverage area by setting up the
channel IDs. In the second step, the relay stations that are inside the coverage area of base stations are accepted, i.e., the
relay stations that can extend their coverage area. In the third step, the mobile stations outside the coverage area of base
28 Kumar et al.: A Survey on Technical Issues in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multihop relay networks
station, i.e., that can be served by using a multi hop replay station, are accepted. We have analyzed the time taken to accept
mobile stations, i.e., the time taken by a base station to accept its neighboring mobile stations.
a new mobile station of the corresponding ID. Here, the basic channel ID and primary Id are assigned the next ID.(i.e., 2,
3,4 .., as 1 is set to its mobile station that is inside its coverage area)
Step-4: The Base station decides that the corresponding mobile station access station is the relay station.
Step-5: Base station accepts the new mobile stations.
Step-6: Link mode is automatically set by BS as
Link Mode=Auto (SNR=39.30011 dB). There are no DIUC and UIUC numbers assigned, because they are assigned to
the relay station that provides extended coverage.
The above steps are used by the base station to accept a new mobile station that is outside the coverage area and to
assign a channel ID to the mobile stations. The signal to noise ratio is set automatically as (i.e., SNR=39.30011 dB) for the
new link.
Path Management
The medium access control layer provides routing and path management. [20] As the IEEE 802.16j network comprises
multi-hop paths between the base stations and mobile stations, the standard defines two approaches for path management,
embedded and explicit path management. It also defines network entry management. A path from the base stations to the
subscriber stations through relay stations should be selected according to the channel condition to maximize the data traffic.
Carrier to interference and noise ratio is used to determine the path. The path selection scheme used previously uses an
effective radio, resource index as a routing metric for selecting paths. The effective radio can be calculated by an inverse
number of carrier to interference and noise ratio. The minimum cost is chosen for path selection.
Interference Management
There are number of interference models defined, some of them are physical Interference model, primary Interference
model, protocol interference model, no spatial reuse model. The physical Interference model considers a set of links that
can be active at the same time only if the signal-to-interference and-noise ratio at every receiver of those links can remain
above a threshold. This model is harder with the applications of smart antennas, so it can be used in simulations, and no
algorithm is designed using this model. The primary Interference model simply treats collisions as the only interference
source. If two links e = (vi; vj) and e0 = (vi0; vj0) are incidents, then we say there exists primary interference in between. It
is usually much easier to design scheduling algorithms and analyze the network Performance using this primary model. In
the Protocol Interference model, the signal-to-interference and-noise ratio needs to be computed at each receiving node for
all pairs of links in order to design this protocol interference model. An interference graph is drawn, in which each vertex
corresponds to a communication link, and there exists an edge between two vertices if and only if the corresponding links
interfere with each other. We can identify for each node a set (ni) of neighboring nodes potentially interfering with it. This
model is rarely used in worldwide interoperability for microwave access research due to its difficulty. The no spatial reuse
model adopts well in trivial scheduling algorithm in the worldwide interoperability for microwave access standard. It fits
well at some point to multi point worldwide interoperability for microwave access network, 2-hop wireless radio network
that demands high signal to interference noise ratio. This model is too pessimistic, such that a lot of spectrum resources are
wasted. In the single hop interference model, two links interfere with each other if and only if they are at most 1-hop away
from each other. It is considerably more difficult than the primary interference model. This model is suitable for networks
with a request-to- send/clear-to-send based medium access control layer. Worldwide interoperability for microwave access
adopts a time division multiple access -based medium access control layer; 1 -hop interference model is not appropriate.
The K-hop Interference model is even harder than the 1-hop interference model. It is usually very hard to achieve exact
algorithms or even approximate algorithms with reasonable approximation ratios for a problem with such an interference
model. It is not as realistic as the interference range model, and is therefore rarely used in worldwide interoperability for
microwave access research. This model is used to study the maximum throughput scheduling problem in wireless networks.
Distributed wireless scheduling algorithms were designed using this model. This interference range mode decides whether
30 Kumar et al.: A Survey on Technical Issues in IEEE 802.16j Mobile Multihop relay networks
or not interference may exist by the physical distance between end nodes of these two links. This model is closer to reality
and also more difficult. It is widely used in worldwide interoperability for microwave access research. Due to its hardness,
it is very difficult to design algorithms with any theoretical merit using this model.
way mode, a dual gateway will connect to subscriber station and base station, which provides the coverage area of base
station. In multi hop mode, relay stations can provide coverage extension to the subscriber station for both base station and
also access points. In the mobile network scenario, a mobile gateway can be used by external clients outside the coverage
area of Wi-Fi / worldwide interoperability for microwave access.
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N. Nagarajan received his B.Tech and M.E. degrees in Electronics Engineering at M.I.T
Chennai. He received his PhD in Faculty of information and communication Engineering from
Anna University, Chennai. He is currently working as Principal, Coimbatore Institute of
Engineering and Technology, Coimbatore. He is member of board of study of faculty of
information Technology at Anna University of technology, Coimbatore. His specialization
includes optical, wireless Ad-hoc and sensor networks. He is guiding assorted research scholars
in optical networks and wireless networks.