Comparison of IEEE802.16 WiMax Scenarios with Fixed and Mobile Subscribers in Tight Reuse

WiMax broadband MAN based on the IEEE 802.16d/e standard supports mobile as well as fixed wireless access services. Both types of subscriber data links are characterized by totally different radio conditions such as e.g. propagation, interference rejection capability, terminal antenna gain, pattern and height. This leads to a significant coverage mismatch, different user application throughput and varying system capacity. Especially the mixture of both mobile and fixed subscribers sharing the same radio resources will consequently determine the cellular network structure, frequency planning and radio resource management. In this paper the performance of mobile and fixed WiMax data links in cellular 3.5 GHz deployments has been thoroughly analyzed depending on cell size, frequency reuse and system load. Detailed link and network level simulations have been provided for an OFDM-256 system with 3.5 MHz channels deployed in homogeneous hexagonal tight 1x1 and 1x3 reuse with cell radius of 300 m, 1000 m, and 2000 m. Simulation results for the user application throughput, modulation and coding scheme utilization, FTP download time, channel load and packet call blocking have been presented.