Effect of idle mode on power saving in mobile WiMAX network

Abstract

IEEE 802.16e is an emerging standard for mobile wireless broadband access systems. In any mobile networks, power saving is one of the most important features for the extension of devices' lifetime. To manage power usage in a more efficient way, the IEEE 802.16e standard specifies two mechanisms, sleep mode and idle mode. Idle mode allows the mobile station (MS) to conserve power and resources by restricting its activity to scanning at discrete intervals and thus eliminates the active requirement for handover operation and other normal operations. On the base station (BS) and network side, idle mode provides a simple and timely method for alerting the MS for pending downlink (DL) traffic directed to the MS and thus eliminates air interface and network handover traffic from essentially inactive MSs. An attempt made in this paper to evaluate the performance of idle mode in terms of power saving in MSs for long battery life. © 2013 Springer.