WiMAX, Rural, Fixed

Perform network analysis for a WiMAX air interface in a rural/suburban scenario for fixed communications, such as the last mile to a residential internet subscriber.

WiMAX Standard and Definition

WiMAX refers to the IEEE 802.16 standard family of wireless-networks standards ratified by the WiMAX forum. The standard used here is IEEE 802.16d (fixed broadband wireless access). WiMAX is similar to long-range Wi-Fi, but it works over much greater distances.

Model Type

The model is a rural/suburban scenario where fixed communications coverage for WiMAX is calculated. The geometry is described by topography (elevation) and clutter (land usage).
Figure 1. The topographical database that describes the elevation of the geometry.


Figure 2. The clutter database that describes the land usage of the geometry.


Sites and Antennas

There are seven antenna sites in this scenario. Each site has three sector antennas at a height of 25 m. The carrier frequencies are near 3.5 GHz.

Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Sites tab to view the sites and antennas.

Air Interface

The air interface is defined by a WiMax wireless standard WiMAX_Sample_Rural_Fixed.wst file. Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDM/SOFDMA) is selected under multiple access schemes and time division duplex (TDD) is used for duplex separation (switching between uplink and downlink).
Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Air Interface tab.

A list of different modulation and coding schemes are added to this interface on the Air Interface tab, under Transmission Modes.

Computational Method

The dominant path model (DPM) is selected for the computation, which focuses on the most relevant path, which leads to shorter computation times.

Tip: Click Project > Edit Project Parameter and click the Computation tab to change the model.

Results

Propagation results show at every location the power received by a hypothetical isotropic receiver from each transmitting antenna, as well as field strength and line-of-sight status. Results are calculated for a single prediction plane at 20 m height.

The type of network simulation is a static simulation (homogeneous traffic per cell). The network simulation calculates the following:
  • cell area
  • site area
  • best server
  • maximum data rate for both uplink and downlink
  • minimum required transmitter power
  • reception probability
  • SNIR (max) for all modulation and coding schemes for uplink and downlink
Various network results for the defined modulation schemes can be viewed under Results: Network in the result tree.
Figure 3. Maximum downlink throughput.