SUMMARY This paper presents RA-WF2Q+, a radio-aware version of the well-known WF2Q+ scheduler, tailored for the downlink traffic of a WiMAX system. With respect to WF2Q+, the proposed scheduler introduces the number of slots in the downlink frame as a parameter of the sharing decision process. This solution permits taking into account the information on the radio channel quality experimented by each user and, at the same time, exploiting the well-known features of WF2Q+. The simulation study comparing the performance of the proposed scheduler with those of other well-known scheduling algorithms highlights some interesting characteristics of RA-WF2Q+. In particular, it permits achieving the highest overall system throughput while guaranteeing the requested quality of service for voice applications. Only when the radio resources become scarce with respect to the total offered traffic, RA-WF2Q+ displays its opportunistic nature, favouring the users nearest to the base station. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]