A WiMAX Physical Layer Use for Emergency Audio Communications

Placed in the context of emergency communication situations, where all network infrastructures are totally down, the audio communication is required in the first hours. This paper presents a new WiMAX PHY layer model used to determine thresholds for modulation profile switching in order to enhance the communication robustness or throughput. The model used in this paper is our implemented WiMAX model using Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) schemes. Two channel models and two WiMAX modulation profiles are studied using two different audio samples. The simulation results obtained and confirmed by listening experiments, have demonstrated that the audio quality is improved in terms of perceived noise. Thus, the new criterion using WiMAX radio is well suited for emergency communications.