Coverage Analysis for IEEE 802.16e/WiMAX Systems

This paper describes a frame work for evaluating the coverage performance of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system as defined in the IEEE 802.16e/WiMAX standard. Both the downlink and the uplink coverage are presented under a system with multiple cells and sectors. The spatial area coverage for a single frequency reuse and reuse of 3 are evaluated. Our results show that a WiMAX system can be uplink coverage limited for base station receivers with only two antennas. It is shown that there is a tradeoff between the uplink sector throughput and coverage performance. On the downlink, it is shown that a combination of cyclic delay diversity (CDD) with segmented frequency reuse of 3 significantly improves coverage performance. Also, shown is a comparison of downlink coverage performance between maximum ratio combining (MRC) and minimum mean square (MMSE) receivers at the subscriber station. It is shown that for a single frequency reuse an MMSE receiver with CDD at the transmitter are needed for adequate downlink coverage performance.