Analysis of MIMO Systems used in planning a 4G-WiMAX Network in Ghana

E T,W.K Ofosu,K Diawuo,E Affum

doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2013.040728

Abstract

With the increasing demand for mobile data services, Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) is emerging as one of the fastest growing areas within mobile communications. Innovative wireless communication systems, such as WiMAX, are expected to offer highly reliable broadband radio access in order to meet the increasing demands of emerging high speed data and multimedia services. In Ghana, deployment of WiMAX technology has recently begun. Planning these high capacity networks in the presence of multiple interferences in order to achieve the aim of enabling users enjoy cheap and reliable internet services is a critical design issue. This paper has used a deterministic approach for simulating the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) of initial MIMO antenna configurations which were considered in deploying a high capacity 4G-WiMAX network in Ghana. The radiation pattern of the antenna used in the deploying the network has been simulated with Genex-Unet and NEC and results presented. An adaptive 4x4 MIMO antenna configuration with optimally suppressed sidelobes has been suggested for future network deployment since the adaptive 2x2 MIMO antenna configuration, which was used in the initial network deployment provides poor estimates for average BER performance as compared to 4x4 antenna configuration which seem less affected in the presence of multiple interferers.

Highlights

Broadband internet is quite expensive in Ghana and in many Sub-Saharan African countries and as such, subscribers in many African countries with high data demand have no option than to rely on network operators who offer poor Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) access and long customer connection times
An adaptive 4x4 Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) antenna configuration with optimally suppressed sidelobes has been suggested for future network deployment since the adaptive 2x2 MIMO antenna configuration, which was used in the initial network deployment provides poor estimates for average BER performance as compared to 4x4 antenna configuration which seem less affected in the presence of multiple interferers
This paper studies the potential sources of interference in the network and presents analysis into the BER performance of the MIMO antenna configuration which was used in the initial network deployment in the presence of multiple interferers

Summary

Introduction

Broadband internet is quite expensive in Ghana and in many Sub-Saharan African countries and as such, subscribers in many African countries with high data demand have no option than to rely on network operators who offer poor Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) access and long customer connection times. Coverage prediction and capacity estimation were mostly well separable. In 3G and 4G networks, users operate on the same frequency carrier and as such the number of simultaneous connections directly influences the system capacity. Because of the need for 3G and 4G networks to continue offering higher data rate service as the network grows, planning these networks cannot be separated into coverage and capacity estimation as there is the need to increase capacity to serve multiple services like speech, internet and high data rate interactive services [2]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion