Performance Analysis of WiMAX for Mobile Applications

The goal of this paper is to investigate the performance of a mobile WiMAX system for various settings of its physical-layer parameters and for realistic propagation channels. For this, a physical layer model of IEEE 802.16e is developed in software. Different propagation channels are implemented, such as the Rayleigh channel and the SUI channel models. Moreover, a tapped delay line channel model is developed for a specific area in Ghent (Belgium) using raytracing software. For this area, the maximum achievable range of a realistic mobile WiMAX system is found to be 2.7 km. Additionally, the performance gain of MIMO systems with diversity is investigated. The diversity gain of a 2x2 MIMO Alamouti diversity scheme is found to vary between 3 and 5.5 dB.