Channel based Simulation and analysis of IEEE802.16 (WiMAX) — 2004/WMAN-OFDM physical layer for BWA to support Telemedicine

Telemedicine is currently being used to bridge the physical distance between patients in remote areas and medical specialists around the world. It may be defined as the use of electronic information and communication technologies to provide and support health care when the patient and the specialists are remotely located. The Telemedicine system requires internet connectivity at the doctor and health worker ends. WiMAX is able to provide ubiquitous internet access allowing end users to be connected to the internet independently of their location, including rural and impervious areas where the deployment of a wired access solution would not be economically feasible. This paper focuses on Simulation based analysis of IEEE802.16-2004/WMAN-OFDM PHY layer. Specifically it aims at quantifying the improvement of PHY layer performance, evaluated in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) versus Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), with respect to the different channel models. The simulation was done using MATLAB.