Evaluation of Mobile WiMAX IEEE 802.16e Handover Load Balancing Trends

Mobile Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Mobile WiMAX) is a wireless Metropolitan Area Network technology based on IEEE 802.16e standard. Mobility, security, Quality of Service (QoS), centralized scheduling and radio resources utilization are offered by connection oriented MAC layer in Mobile WiMAX. In this paper, Spare Capacity Procedure technique and WiMAX QoS Aware Load Balancing Protocol are discussed and evaluated. These two techniques represent the major trends of load balancing in Mobile WiMAX 802.16e technology. These two techniques using Base Station initiated handover for Load Balancing (LB) among cells. These cells are in the same Access Service Network (ASN) in Mobile WiMAX Network. Performance of both techniques have been analyzed and evaluated based on an extensive simulation. The simulation shows how these techniques can balance load efficiently among neighbor Base Stations (NBS) in the same ASN with QoS guaranteed. QoS achieved by moving Mobile Station (MS) nodes in overlapping area between cells from Serving Base Station (SBS) to Target BS (TBS). The elaborated performance analysis shows a set of advantages and disadvantages of these techniques. This evaluation study represents an important entry point for choosing the best techniques that can distribute load among BSs and guarantee QoS for all MSs using real-time applications.