Performance Evaluation of Broadband WiMAX Services over High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) Communication Channel

First, this paper describes a prediction of Rice factor (K factor) estimation for a high altitude platforms (HAPs) wireless channel. Estimation is based on experimental data which was collected from an object floating above the ground and carrying transmitter apparatus to perform as a HAPs. This experiment is intended to study multipath channel behaviour represented by K value for a wireless communication using HAPs. We use moment-based method estimator to characterize HAPs-channel in a wide interval of elevation angle. Secondly, the performance of WiMAX (IEEE802.16e) high speed transmission is simulated over the predicted HAPs channel. It is also shown how Doppler effect and K factor which is governed by elevation angle can contribute to the performance. We found that WiMAX services, which require high level requirement, fail to achieve an acceptable performance over HAPs channel if the elevation angle is lower than 40 degrees.