Planning of Efficient Wireless Access with IEEE 802.16 for Connecting Home Network to the Internet

The emergence of IEEE802.16 wireless standard technology (WiMAX) has significantly increased the choice to operators for the provisioning of wireless broadband access network. WiMAX is being deployed to compliment with xDSL in underserved or lack of the broadband network area, in both developed and developing countries. Many incumbent operators in developing countries are considering the deployment of WiMAX as part of their broadband access strategy. This paper presents an efficient and simple method for planning of broadband fixed wireless access (BFWA) with IEEE802.16 standard to support home connection to Internet. The study formulates the framework for planning both coverage and capacity designs. The relationship between coverage area and access rate from subscriber in each environment area is presented. The study also presents the throughput and channel capacity of IEEE802.16 in different access rates. An extensive analysis is performed and the results are applied to the real case study to demonstrate the practicality of using IEEE 802.16 for connecting home to Internet. Using empirical data and original subscriber traffic from measurement, it is shown that the BFWA with IEEE802.16 standard is a capacity limited system. The capacity of IEEE802.16 is related to different factors including frequency bandwidth, spectrum allocation, estimation of traffic per subscriber, and choice of adaptive modulation from subscriber terminal. The wireless access methods and procedures evolved in this research work and set out in this paper are shown to be well suited for planning BFWA system based on IEEE802.16 which supports broadband home to Internet connections.