Uplink throughput performance of FH-OFDMA improved by 16 QAM: Effect estimation and validation in MBWA system field trial

Abstract

In this paper, we report on a mobile broadband wireless access (MBWA) system field trial with Fast Low-latency Access with Seamless Handoff Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (FLASH-OFDM), which was carried out at Sendai city in Japan. In this paper, the uplink throughput improvement effect of 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is estimated by using the measured throughput and received signal level of quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK). The estimation results show that 16 QAM yields a higher uplink throughput than QPSK within coverage of 700 m when the base-station antenna height is 58 m. The results are validated by evaluating the uplink throughput performance of 16 QAM measured in the field trial. We consider that 16 QAM is useful to provide a mobile broadband data communication service to subscribers in uplink as well as downlink.