Detailed Modeling of MAC Throughput and Ranges for Mobile WiMAX

Mobile WiMAX is today one of the potential technology choices for delivering mobile broadband access. Despite its potential, existing radio coverage calculations only relate to a low level physical data rate, rather than to the actual MAC (Medium Access Control) throughput, which is more meaningful from a user's perspective. We therefore elaborated on linking high level MAC throughput to low level radio coverage. We simulated the complete system, thereby ultimately combining two metrics most sought for: MAC throughput by radio coverage range. With respect to those metrics, the impact of time dispersion models, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output), the packet size and the number of users is studied. In a 5 MHz band at 2.5 GHz, maximum ranges are found to vary between 1.2 km and 1.9 km, while the highest MAC throughput was found here to vary between 4.64 Mbps and 10.32 Mbps, for the considered parameters values and use case.