System‐Level Evaluation

System‐level evaluation playsa crucial role in the standardization process of new wireless technologies. System‐level evaluation should be ideally carried out in a real‐life network. However, risks ofservice disruption and compatibility issues of some of the network components to support new schemes considerably reduce the scope of the evaluation. To avoidthese problems, software‐based system‐level simulatorshave been widely adopted inresearch and industrial environments. These tools accurately replicate the main processes and events of wireless networks. Theobjective of this chapter is twofold: 1) to present a system‐level simulator for the evaluation of FUTON algorithms, particularly for the distributed broadband wireless system (DBWS) using OFDMA (orthogonal frequency division multiple access); and 2) to present simulation results obtained after implementing the final radio resource management (RRM) solution for the DBWS, which validates the benefits of the proposed FUTON algorithms. The proposed RRM solution jointly decides on the scheduled users, their modulation and coding schemes, their transmit power levels, and the optimum node attachment mode. Impairments caused by the radio‐over‐fiber (RoF) infrastructurehave also been considered. Considerable gains are obtained, particularly in terms of aggregate capacity under environments with good line‐of‐sight (LOS) and relatively short optical links (i.e., low signal distortion and attenuation).