Cross-layer modeling of capacity in wireless networks: Application to UMTS/HSDPA, IEEE802.11 WLAN and IEEE802.16 WiMAX

We investigate in this work the cross-layer modeling of the capacity of wireless systems in the presence of two types of flows: streaming and elastic, under a dynamic configuration wherein users join the system and leave it after a finite duration. For streaming traffic, this duration is independent of the resources these flows get from the network. This is not the case of (TCP-based) elastic traffic whose flows have a service rate that is proportional to the share of resources each flow gets from the network, as obtained in a cross-layer manner from lower layers. We focus in this paper on the MAC/PHY layer and consider three different types of scheduling: CDMA with opportunistic scheduling, used in UMTS/HSDPA, CSMA/CA in use in IEEE802.11 WLAN and OFDMA as in IEEE802.16 WiMax.