RADIO NETWORK PLANNING AND OPTIMIZATION IN MOBILE WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e)

The project is mainly about the radio network design in Worldwide interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) system. Being an IP based, wireless broadband technology WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) is able to provide performance-wise like 802.11/Wi-Fi networks while at same time possess cellular network-like performance in terms of coverage and QOS (quality of service). Its acronym has meaning of "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX). WiMAX is introduced by IEEE to handle metropolitan area. Fixed WiMAX do provide coverage up to 50 km while its variant, Mobile WiMAX can cover up to 5-15 km distance. This is in contrast to WiFi technology which covers wireless local area network with radius of 100m at most. WiMAX can operates on both licensed and non-licensed frequencies, providing a regulated environment and viable economic model for wireless carriers. WiMAX’s purpose is to verify interoperability wireless broadband radios between vendors. Testings of WiMAX equipments are done by WiMAX Forum, mainly to confirm interoperability. This is contrast to its 4G counterpart- the more recent Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. LTE can be a parallel technology to WiMAX but LTE meant to provide controlled environment of Internet. LTE devices are hesitant to give free access while WiMAX is ready to serve metropolitan area unanimously. Residents of urban area or any densely populated area will have serious triple-play (voice, video, data) traffic congestion in terms of Internet connectivity when the physical link is in wired form. To elevate from congested to a much-less congested traffic, a wireless medium is proposed as an alternative to wired counterpart, that is WiMAX platform. WiMAX further divides into two category, Fixed WiMAX and Mobile WiMAX. For mobility advantages, Mobile WiMAX will be thouroughly discussed as the proposed solution for this problem. Ultimately, we will be able to verify performance of WiMAX network via simulator ArcMap running Cellular Expert interface, verify deployment of Base Station and verify optimized coverage pattern on the network.