IMPROVING INDOOR CAPACITY FOR WIMAX NETWORKS USING MULTI-HOP RELAYS

摘要

Despite the fact that advanced techniques such as adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), AAS and MIMO are incorporated into WiMAX systems, providing network access at indoor locations posses some challenges in terms of meeting the main objectives of performance, time-to-market and cost optimization. Indoor propagation conditions (i.e. higher path loss, penetration loss) make it difficult to rely on the conventional WiMAX infrastructure typically designed to provide high coverage and range only. In this paper, a low-cost and easy to deploy relay based WiMAX system coupled with channel allocation methodology is proposed as a means of coverage and capacity improvement for an indoor subscriber. An extensive system level simulation (channel models, path loss, shadow fading, antenna pattern, etc.) has been carried out. The distribution of SINR, system outage and system capacity performance metrics are used to evaluate the performance. The results show that for indoor coverage, conventional WiMAX system deployment failed to meet the required outage probability of 10% for BER of 1 × 10~(-6); while for the same coverage area the proposed system improved the coverage and capacity.