Performance comparison of antenna selection algorithms in WiMAX with link adaptation

Antenna subset selection methods are feasible to reduce the hardware complexity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Numerous methods have been devised to resolve this problem. Most of these selection schemes were applied to specific system models and for frequency flat systems. In broadband systems like WiMAX (IEEE 802.16-2004), the overall channel under consideration is typically frequency selective, and flat only over the subcarrier bandwidths. In this work, receive antenna subset selection schemes are applied to a WiMAX compliant MIMO-OFDM transmission system. Simulation results in terms of average throughput and BER on an adaptive modulation and coding link are shown. Very unexpectedly we find that the optimal selection for maximum throughput, does not give the best results in terms of BER performance. We thus conclude that minimum BER is not the right choice for antenna selection. We also find through our simulations that the simple, low complex norm based selection algorithm, provides good results, close to optimal selection in frequency selective channels.