Spectral efficiency of mobile WiMAX networks employing adaptive modulation and coding

Mobile WiMAX technology is based on IEEE 802.16e standard and considered as one of the most prominent solutions capable to provide high speed access in metropolitan areas. Due to limited radio resources, it is necessary to consider radio resource efficiency. This paper investigates the spectral efficiency gain achieved when applying link adaptation techniques on the downlink (DL) of the IEEE 802.16e-based mobile WiMAX networks. The performance evaluation is carried out using a system-level simulation. Evaluation results show that system using adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) significantly outperforms systems using fixed modulation (FM) and adaptive modulation (AM) schemes alone in terms of the spectral efficiency and percentage of successful links.