At the Spring 2009 Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in Beijing, Intel premiered a prototype demonstrating Group Scheduling, a technology to increase the capacity of VoIP in 802.16m, next-generation WiMAX networks. At IDF we demonstrated the reduction in size of the DL-MAP (management overhead information) for VoIP traffic with group scheduling. Here we demonstrate how the reduction in the MAP overhead leads to capacity gains, thereby supporting larger number of VoIP calls in next-gen WiMAX networks.

Since IDF we have extended our prototype to include the PHY layer in the BS and the MS. Additionally, the use of a channel emulator enables us to model actual cellular channel conditions. The prototype includes three WiMAX CPE devices each capable of supporting multiple simultaneous VoIP flows, similar to an actual WiMAX cell. The video below describes the extensions and the results from the prototype.

With the setup we see that the reduction in MAP overhead with group scheduling leads to up to 40% increase in VoIP capacity. This improvement is over and above additional gains achieved by the 802.16m specification, which will increase peak data rates up to 10x more than today’s wireless networks over time.