Investigating the distance effects on performance degradation of mobile WiMAX technology using NCTUns tool

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a technology for wireless broadband and the core techniques for the fourth-generation (4G) wireless mobile communications. WiMAX is a new broadband wireless access technology that provides very high data throughput over long distance in a point-to-multipoint environment. There are two main classes of WiMAX system called fixed WiMAX and mobile WiMAX. Mobile WiMAX is developed to support mobility and portability. Its technology is best meets the demand for personal broadband services. This research has focused on the performance evaluation of mobile WiMAX topology. It is conducted using an open source simulator called NCTUns 5.0 which is developed by National Chiao Tung University. It has been used to simulate WiMAX topology since it supports real-life application. Additionally by using simulator, it is easy to carry out experiments without the actual hardware. Several scenarios have been created and the mobile WiMAX topology has been tested. The data of the simulation results have been gathered and the percentages of performance degradation with the effects of distance between mobile station and base station were analyzed. Based on the results obtained, the data rate degrades slightly when the distance between base station and mobile station is more than 10000 meters.