WiMAX Overview and System Performance

Fan Wang, Amitava Ghosh, Chandy Sankaran and Phil Fleming

Advanced Radio Technology, Motorola Inc. 1441 W. Shure Drive, Arlington Heights, IL 60004
{F.Wang, amitava.ghosh, csankar1, P.Fleming}@motorola.com


Abstract In this paper, the performance of WiMAX network
with DL SIMO, DL MIMO and UL SIMO is analyzed via system
simulations. Two data traffic models are considered, namely web
browsing (HTTP) and full buffer sessions, operating in multi path
fading channels such as the ITU Pedestrian-B and Vehicular-A
channels. The control channel coverage and reliability of
WiMAX using realistic overhead is also analyzed in this paper.
I. WIMAX OVERVIEW
WiMAX forum is an industry consortium promoting the
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.16
family of standard for broadband wireless access systems.
Historically, the first IEEE 802.16 standard (and associated
802.16c profile definitions) addressed primarily line-of-sight
(LOS) environments at high frequency bands (10-66GHz) via
conventional QAM modulated, single-carrier techniques. The
limited market potential for mm-wave LOS systems results in
the development of the IEEE 802.16a amendment to support
non line-of-sight (NLOS) modes in radio bands between 2-11
GHz. The 802.16-2004 standard (known as 802.16d) supports
fixed wireless internet service and was published in 2004. The
802.16-2005 standard (known as 802.16e) provides further
enhancements to the 802.16-2004 standard by adding the
support of nomadic, portable, and mobile wireless access and
was published by IEEE at the beginning of 2006.
The IEEE 802.16 family of standards contains many
optional features that may or may not be implemented by the
vendors and operators. One task of the WiMAX forum is to
decide on an agreed profile by reducing the number of options in
the standard, and to promote inter operability among interested
parties. In this paper, the performance of the latest IEEE
802.16-2005 standard, based on the agreed WiMAX mobility
profile is analyzed.
WiMAX system supports scalable system bandwidth using
TDD. Table 1 shows an example of such a carrier
bandwidth-scaling process for a 5ms frame duration, where the
cyclic prefix (CP) duration is 1/8 of the useful symbol duration.

FFT Length
128 512 1024 2048
System BW (MHz)
1.25 5 10 20
Subcarrier Separation (kHz)
10.94 10.94 10.94 10.94
Symbol Duration (Ts, s) inc. CP
102.86 102.86 102.86 102.86
Number of OFDM symbols
1
(5ms)
48 48 48 48
Table 1. WiMAX scalable bandwidth.

1
One symbol time of TTG is included.
The first version of the WiMAX profile supports only
frequency diverse scheduling scheme. For the frequency
diverse mode, such as the Partial Usage of Subchannels (PUSC),
the subcarriers assigned to each logical subchannel are
pseudo-randomly distributed across the available subcarrier set
which may only represent a fraction of the total subcarrier
resources according to a frequency re-use pattern. The random
allocation of subcarriers in frequency diverse mode provides
frequency diversity in a frequency selective fading channel. In
case of frequency selective scheduling (known as the Band
Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) mode in 802.16e
systems), the scheduler allocates adjacent subcarriers for
transmission based on the channel feedback information.
Multiple modulation and coding rates are supported by the
WiMAX system. In addition, several advanced multiple antenna
technologies, such as adaptive beam forming, space time coding
and MIMO spatial multiplexing are also supported in the
WiMAX.
The downlink and uplink transmissions are time division
duplexed (TDD) within a single frequency band. The downlink
and uplink duty cycles can be adjusted as per the WiMAX
profile. A diagram of the 802.16e TDD frame structure is
shown in Figure 1. At the beginning of each frame, a control
message (known as Media Access Protocol (MAP)) indicating
the downlink and uplink transmission format and resource
allocation for uplink/downlink users is transmitted. The size of
this message can be up to several OFDM symbols, and is
dependent on factors such as the number of users scheduled for
transmission within that frame. The uplink overhead channels
include ACK/NACK, channel quality feedback and the ranging
/contention based channel.



Figure 1. 802.16e TDD frame structure
1-4244-0063-5/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE
II. WIMAX CONTROL CHANNEL RELIABILITY AND
COVERAGE
A. WiMAX control channels
In WiMAX, the downlink and uplink control information is
transmitted at the beginning of each frame, which includes
preamble, frame control header (FCH) and MAP message. The
first symbol of every DL sub-frame is the preamble which is
used for synchronization, downlink channel estimation etc. The
sub-carriers allocated to the preamble are uniformly distributed
throughout the spectrum and occupy every third sub-carrier.
The first message at the beginning of the second downlink
OFDM symbol is the FCH which provides the information
required to decode the subsequent DL-MAP message. The FCH
carries information like, the sub-channels being used by the
sector in the current frame, coding and length indication for the
DL_MAP etc.
Following the FCH, the MAP message indicates the
resource allocation for downlink and uplink data and control
signal transmission. The MAP message includes several
information elements (IE) and has a fixed part and a variable
part which depends on the number of downlink and uplink users
being scheduled per frame. An example of the size of fixed and
variable downlink MAP overhead is shown in Table 2.
WiMAX also supports sub-MAP message, where different data
rates can be used to transmit the control message for users with
different channel conditions.
MAP IE size (bits)
Ranging region allocation IE 152
Fast feedback allocation IE (3 IEs) 168
HARQ ACK region allocation IE 52
Fixed overhead in HARQ DL MAP IE 36
Fixed overhead in HARQ UL MAP IE 68
Fixed overhead in DL HARQ ACK IE 44
Interference and Noise IE 16
UL HARQ/user 33
DL HARQ/user 44
Table 2. MAP overhead (an example)
The number of symbols for downlink MAP depends on the
system bandwidth, number of users scheduled per frame, frame
size etc. The total MAP overhead (in OFDM symbols) and the
number of (DL+UL) symbols available for bearer data with 5
and 10 users scheduled per frame is shown in Table 3 for 10
MHz allocation. It may be observed from the table that with 5
scheduled users/frame (e.g. FTP, HTTP traffic), the number of
symbols available for both downlink and uplink bearer is 35, if
95% cell coverage is required for downlink MAP (achieved
using rep=6 with CSTD, see Figure 2). This translates into total
(DL+UL) overhead of approximately 27% without accounting
for the pilot overhead for bearer data and cyclic prefix (CP).
5 users
scheduled
per frame
10users
scheduled
per frame
MAP overhead symbols 10 12
with Rep=6
Other overhead symbols 5 5
symbols for (DL+UL)
bearer for Rep=6
33 31
MAP overhead symbols
with Rep=4
6 8
symbols for (DL+UL)
bearer for Rep=4
37 35
Table 3. Number of symbols available for bearer data (10
MHz)
B. WiMAX control channel coverage
The MAP control channel coverage was simulated using the
simulation configuration shown in the Table 4 with and without
cyclic shift transmit diversity (CSTD). CSTD is a space time
coding to achieve special diversity without explicit signaling to
the receiver. With CSTD, each antenna element in a transmit
array sends a circularly shifted version of the same OFDM
time-domain symbol. For example if there are M
b
transmit
antennas at the BTS and if antenna one sends an un-shifted
version of the OFDM symbol, then antenna m transmits the
same OFDM symbol, but circularly shifted by a delay. Note
that each antenna adds a cyclic prefix after circularly shifting the
OFDM symbol and thus the delay-spread protection offered by
the cyclic prefix is unaffected by the CSTD.
Figure 2. Simulated performance of control channel
coverage for TU channel
Figure 2 shows the CDF of the control channel coverage for
various repetition rates and using 1, 2 and 4 transmit antennas
and using TU channel model with 50% of the users at 3 kmph
and the other 50% at 30 kmph. It may be observed from the
figure that using CSTD with 2 transmit and 2 receive antennas,
R=1/2 CTC code with a repetition of 6, more than 95% cell
coverage is achieved at FER operating point of 1%.
Parameters Value
Number of Cells (3 sectors per site) 19
Operating Frequency 2500 MHz
BS-to-BS Distance 1.23 Km
Minimum Mobile-to-BS Distance 36 m
Antenna Pattern 70 (-3 dB) with 20
dB front-to-back
BS Height 40 m
Mobile Terminal Height 1.5 m
Propagation Model
L=126.2+36 log (d)
where d is in km
Log-Normal Shadowing STD 5.6 dB
BS shadowing correlation 0.5
BS Antenna Gain
14 dBi (1/2 Antenna),
15 dBi (4 Antenna)
MS Antenna Gain 0 dBi
Penetration Loss 15 dB
BS Maximum PA Power 2 W
Channel Model and Vehicle Speed
TU-12 ray model,
50% 30 km/hr, 50% 3
km/hr
# of BS TX/RX Antenna 1/2/4
# of MT TX/RX Antenna 2
Table 4. MAP coverage simulation assumptions
III. WIMAX SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
A. Link Performance Prediction:
There are several approaches to map OFDM link
performance in a system simulator (see [2] and the references
therein). The motivation is to map the per-carrier symbol SNR
computed for each MS in the system simulator to a single
effective scalar quantity (SIR) by using some mapping function.
The SIR is then used to find the block error probability based on
a set of AWGN link curves.
One approach of link to system mapping is based on
Exponential Effective SIR Mapping (EESM). This approach is
motivated by the Union-Chernoff bound for BPSK modulation.
The effective SNR of a frame is calculated based on the
averaged tone SNR weighted by an exponential function.
Another approach of link to system mapping is based on
channel capacity on each individual tone. In an OFDM system,
the instantaneous channel throughput is given by
( ) ( ) [ ]
data QAM equiv QAM tone
k
N C SNR C SNR k =
_
(1)
where
data
N is the number of data tones for one OFDM symbol.
( ) [ ]
QAM tone
C SNR k is the tone capacity on the k-th data tone,
where [ ]
tone
SNR k is the k-th data tone channel condition
2
,

2
In practical OFDM systems, a group of adjacent tones are
treated as one sub-channel. The sub-channel channel condition
is fed back to the transmitter. Thus ( ) [ ]
QAM tone
C SNR k in (1)
indeed corresponds to a sub-channel channel capacity.
which includes the degradations due to ISI and non-ideal
channel estimation.
B. WiMAX system performance
Due to the complex interactions between the physical layer,
user call model, and intermediate network protocols (e.g.
TCP/IP, RLP, RLC) and different scheduling strategy, the
WiMAX system performance is studied using a dynamic system
simulator. A system with 19 hexagonal 3-sector cells is
simulated. The number of subscriber stations is adjusted to meet
the target outage probability requirement. A mixture of
multi-path channel models, such as Pedestrian B and Vehicular
A, is used.
In [1], a prototypical IEEE 802.16e network was analyzed.
However, in this paper, system performance is simulated using a
fully WiMAX compliant system simulator. More importantly,
all the simulation parameters follow the WiMAX mobility
profile.
System simulations were used to determine the throughput
performance (downlink and uplink) of WiMAX. The cell layout,
transmit power and path loss model for data traffic system
simulation are similar to the ones for MAP coverage study as
was shown in Table 4. Additional assumptions are listed in
Table 5. The simulation results are provided for full buffer
traffic and HTTP Web browsing traffic, with 1x1 and 1x3
frequency reuse for downlink and only using full buffer traffic
model for uplink. In the case of 1x3 frequency reuse, a total 30
MHz frequency bands are allocated across the whole system.
The HTTP Web browsing model and associated parameters are
described in [5].
Two kinds of system configurations are simulated for
downlink transmission, namely a) SIMO with one transmit and
two receive antennas and b) MIMO with two transmit and two
receive antennas. For uplink, only SIMO is simulated.
For downlink MIMO simulation, the total transmit power is
the same as SIMO so that a power fair comparison can be made.
In addition, the system adaptively chooses downlink
transmission between single stream (STBC) and multi-stream
(MIMO) based on the channel condition. For SM-MIMO, a low
complexity MMSE receiver is adopted. However, it may be
noted that the MIMO system performance may be further
improved with more advanced receivers, such as the maximum
likelihood receiver.
Parameter Value
Lognormal Shadowing 8dB std, 50m correlation dist.
Carrier Frequency & BW
2.5 GHz, 10 MHz
1x3x1: 1x1 frequency reuse
1x3x3: 1x3 frequency reuse
Shadowing correlation 0.5/1.0 between cells/sectors
Penetration Loss 10dB
Antenna Model
(horizontal)
( )
(
(

|
|
.
|

\
|
=
m
dB
A A , 12 min
2
3

dB 3
= 70 degrees, A
m
= 20 dB
Antenna Gain: 15dBi
MS Antenna Gain -2dBi
Channel Models 50% Ped-B+50% Veh-A @ 30 kmph
Traffic Models [x]
Full buffer
HTTP - Web Browsing with TCP,
BTS Transmit Power 2 W ERP
BTS Tx/Rx Single (dual) Tx / Dual Rx Antennas
Scheduler/resource
allocation
Prop. Fair, non-frequency selective with
delay constraint for delay sensitive traffics
WiMAX mobile Single Tx / Dual Rx Antennas
DL data symbols 1x3x1: 24; 1x3x3: 28
UL data symbols 12
Open loop MIMO 2x2 (STBC and SM with MMSE receiver)
HARQ Chase with maximum 4 transmissions
Table 5. System simulation parameters
Figure 3 and Figure 4 show the downlink sector throughputs
for SIMO and MIMO with 1x3x1 frequency reuse for full buffer
and HTTP traffic respectively. The red bar corresponds to the
2% outage (user throughput < 32kbps) point. It may be
observed that the improvement of using MIMO (with MMSE
receiver) over SIMO is around 10% for 1x3x1 frequency reuse.
In addition, the performance difference between SIMO and
MIMO is smaller for HTTP traffic since HTTP is closer to equal
rate transmission. Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the downlink
sector throughputs for SIMO and MIMO with 1x3x3 frequency
reuse for full buffer and HTTP traffic respectively. Comparing
the performances results from Figure 3 to Figure 6, it may be
observed that the MIMO performance improvement is more
significant for 1x3x3 frequency reuse than that of 1x3x1
frequency reuse since the spatial multiplexing MIMO provides
more gain at a high SINR region. Figure 7 shows the CDF of
the user packet call throughput. It may be observed from the
figure that for downlink HTTP with 2x2 MIMO and 240
mobiles per sector, 95% of users have averaged user packet call
throughputs above 40 kbps.
The spectral efficiency of WiMAX system using a specific
downlink to uplink split is computed according to
sector_throughput*48
( ) _
(DL(UL)_data_symbols+DL(UL)_overhead)
DL UL SE =
Figure 8 compares the downlink spectral efficiency for all cases.
Figure 9 shows the uplink full buffer sector throughput. It
may be observed that the uplink could support a sector
throughput of 1.5 Mbps for 1x3x1 frequency reuse, and 2.9
Mbps for 1x3x3 frequency reuse with only 9 symbols allocated
to UL for bearer data. The corresponding outage (user
throughput< 9.6kbps) is 5%. The uplink spectral efficiency for
the simulated fully mobile WiMAX system is 0.5
bits/sec/Hz/sector.
Finally, it may be noted that all the cases simulated here are
with 100% mobiles moving at 30 kmph. With more static or
slow moving users (3kmph), the spectral efficiency can be
improved by 10~20%. In addition, the system performance
depends on the environment, traffic and receiver type. With
more advanced receivers (such as quasi-maximum-likelihood
receiver for MIMO), closed loop MIMO etc. the downlink
system performance can be further improved. The uplink
performance can also be improved using SDMA (collaborative
MIMO), or using more than two receive antennas at the base
station.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, an overview of WiMAX system and
performance is provided. Simulation results indicate that cyclic
shift transmit diversity can significantly increase the coverage of
WiMAX control channel. It may be further observed that for the
full mobility case downlink spectral efficiency in excess of 1.2
bps/Hz/sector can be achieved, whereas for uplink the spectral
efficiency with SIMO is approx 0.5 bps/Hz/sector.
V. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the assistances
received from Bob Love and Ken Stewart of Motorola Mobile
Device in developing the WiMAX system simulator, and to
extend thanks to many other colleagues who helped in
reviewing the WiMAX system performance.
VI. REFERENCES
[1] F. Wang, A. Ghosh, R. Love, K. Stewart, R. Ratasuk, R. Bachu and Y.
Sun, IEEE 802.16e System Performance: Analysis and Simulations, The
16th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal Indoor and
Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), 2005
[2] Blankenship, Y.W.; Sartori, P.J.; Classon, B.K.; Desai, V.; Baum, K.L,
Link error prediction methods for multi-carrier systems, IEEE
Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), Sept. 2004.
[3] IEEE 802.16-2004, IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area
Networks - Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access
Systems, October 2004.
[4] IEEE 802.16-2005, Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile
Broadband Wireless Access Systems Amendment 2: Physical and
Medium Access Control Layers for Combined Fixed and Mobile
Operation in Licensed Bands and Corrigendum 1 February 2006.
[5] 3GPP2 C.R1002-0, CDMA2000 Evaluation Methodology, December
2004.
[6] WiMAX forum, Mobile WiMAX Part I: A Technical Overview and
Performance Evaluation, February 2006.
4500 5000 5500 6000 6500 7000 7500
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Sector vs User throughput
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14 MSS
SIMO
MIMO (MMSE)
Figure 3. Downlink full buffer traffic throughput (1x3x1).
2600 2800 3000 3200 3400 3600 3800 4000
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Sector vs User throughput
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240 MSS
280 MSS
SIMO
MIMO (MMSE)
Figure 4. Downlink HTTP traffic throughput (1x3x1).
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9
x 10
4
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Sector vs User throughput
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90 MSS
SIMO
MIMO (MMSE)
Figure 5. Downlink full buffer traffic throughput (1x3x3).
7000 7500 8000 8500 9000 9500 10000 10500 11000
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Sector vs User throughput
500 MSS
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700 MSS
SIMO
MIMO (MMSE)
Figure 6. Downlink HTTP traffic throughput (1x3x3).
0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400
0
0.1
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User throughput empirical CDF (DL MIMO HTTP, 240 MSS/sector)
Figure 7. User packet call throughput statistics
DL SIMO DL MIMO
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DL sector spectral efficiency
1x3x1 HTTP
1x3x1 FB
1x3x3 HTTP
1x3x3 FB
Figure 8. Downlink SIMO vs MIMO (MMSE) performance
comparison (1x3x1: 28 DL data symbol, 9 UL data symbol, 7 DL
overhead symbol, 3 UL overhead symbol; 1x3x3: 30 DL data
symbol, 9 UL data symbol, 5 DL overhead symbol, 3 UL overhead
symbol.
1400 1600 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000
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Sector throughput (kbps)
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Sector vs User throughput
5 MSS
10 MSS
20 MSS
30 MSS
1x3x1 reuse
1x3x3 reuse
Figure 9. Uplink full buffer traffic throughput