Techno-economic evaluation of wireless access technologies for campi network environments

The widespread use of wireless access networks caused a rapid and continuous growth of this segment under telecommunications industry by democratizing the use of wireless embedded devices what drives organizations to deploy this type of access into their network environments. It is critical that organizations obtain relevant technical and economic knowledge to support their decision-making process towards identifying the technological option with the best technical and economic feasibility. The aim of this work is to develop a techno-economic evaluation method for Wi-Fi, WiMAX and Mobile Networks. The evaluation targets campi network environments and consists of two criteria: the technical parameter that estimates the cell coverage and capacity, and the economic parameter that estimates the costs for Capital Expendures (CAPEX) and Operational Expendures (OPEX). Additionally, the proposed evaluation method is applied to a case study for a public university campus located in the city of São Paulo. It was concluded that the Wi-Fi technology is inexpensive compared to other evaluated technologies highlighting technical limitations as coverage in outdoor environment. The contribution of this work is to present a techno-economic evaluation method of wireless access technologies for campi network environments, and which considers Brazilian market conditions given this segment is expanding in Brazil.