Podcasting in Mobile WiMAX: A Case Study

Abstract- The mobile WiMAX is based on IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard and is essentially a metropolitan area network (MAN) wireless technology for providing high-quality broadband service. The system works on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and mainly harnesses the technique of fractional frequency reuse for maximum usage of the allocated spectrum. This paper examines the feasibility and requirements for podcasting a file of maximum size of 2594kB, as proposed in a report by WiMAX forum in September 2007, under a specific urban setting of United Kingdom. The parameters discussed for this assessment are bandwidth, downlink transmission time, downlink cell spectral efficiency, downlink cell edge user spectral efficiency and total podcasting bandwidth required each month. The parameters are quantified for two sets of consumers. The first set consist of number of consumers as 3.8 per squarekm, while the second set consist of 1000 consumers per squarekm. The WiMAX report forecasts the WiMAX scenario up to year 2020. However, the parameters for podcasting are assessed and discussed for the year 2010.