WiMAX performance analysis in a selected rural area in South Africa.

Abstract

Bringing broadband access to rural and remote communities has been a very difficult task due to the high cost of installation and complete lack of infrastructure in certain areas. Options currently under serious consideration to enable this access have included GSM, CDMA, Power line telecommunications, and DSL technologies. However, with the addition of the IEEE 802.16 standard - commonly referred to as WiMAX - with its various advantages, another serious option is now being considered. WiMAX is standard developed to provide wireless broadband access to metropolitan area networks. It is capable of providing LOS and NLOS coverage in the range of 350 km with data rates up to 75 Mbps. This research therefore looks at the WiMAX standard MAC and PHY layers with special focus on the PHY layer properties enabling provision ofNLOS coverage (WirelessMAN OFDM PHY). The research evaluates the performance of WiMAX in a rural environment in terms of coverage and traffic analysis. Other aspects include multipath fading and channel estimation. The traffic analysis is carried out using traffic projection formulated over a period often years for Nkandla, a typical rural area in South Africa. This is done to evaluate the sustainability of the designed base stations over the ten-year period with the growing traffic.