[Ns-developers] Preliminary release of NS-3 WiMAX module

[Jahanzeb Farooq]

Hi all,
It's been a while being a silent member of the mailing list. I hereby
announce the preliminary release (version 0.9.0 ??) of the WiMAX module
for NS-3. The module currently implements the fundamental
functionalities of the WiMAX standard. Following is a brief outline of
the functionalities implemented:

- Generation of the MAC frames (in TDD mode) and construction and
transmission of the key MAC management messages (namely DL-MAP, UL-MAP,
DCD, UCD, RNG-REQ and RNG-RSP).
 
- Creation of the burst profiles, the specific MAC layer data
structures which define the PHY specific parameters to be used for
receiving and transmitting.
 
- Network entry and initialization procedure. It includes the scanning
process where the SS (subscriber station) scans for the suitable channel
and the initial ranging process where the SS performs a handshake with
the BS (base station) and exchanges the set of parameters to be used in
the network. 

- Creation and assignment of management and transport connections. Since
scheduling services are not yet implemented, currently only one
transport connection per SS is supported. 

- Uplink scheduler at the BS, responsible of assigning bandwidth/uplink
allocations to SSs. Note that the uplink scheduler currently does not
take into account bandwidth requests since the bandwidth management
mechanism is yet to be implemented. 

- Simplified versions of FCFS based outbound schedulers at BS and SS. 

- Two different versions of the PHY layer: a basic PHY which simply
forwards bursts ignoring any underlying PHY layer details, and a more
complete OFDM PHY layer developed at LIP6, France, as per the WiMAX OFDM
PHY specification. However note that OFDM PHY only uses a simplistic
AWGN channel and no propagation/error model is currently implemented.

- Simplified versions of burst profile manager and classifier. The burst
profile manager implements the functions of creation and assignment of
burst profiles. The classifier maps the incoming traffic to the
connections based on the destination address. 

- The WiMAX Helper and tracing APIs. 

The module has only recently entered into its advanced development
phase. Some of the major features yet to be implemented are scheduling
services, service flow management and bandwidth management. 

For a more detailed version of the above summary please refer to the
README file under src/devices/wimax/

The code is currently located at the link below:
http://yans.inria.fr/code/ns-3-wimax/


Any comments or code reviews are welcomed. 

Thank you.



-- 
Jahanzeb Farooq