IEEE 802.16e system performance: analysis and simulations

In this paper, the performance of a prototypical IEEE 802.16e network is analyzed via link and system simulations. The exponential effective SIR mapping (EESM) is used to map the instantaneous SINR of received signals to a service-specific packet erasure rate (PER), which is in turn used to assess the downlink and uplink network and user data throughput. A variety of data traffic models are considered, including web browsing (HTTP) and full buffer sessions, operating in flat-fading and frequency-selective multipath channels such as the ITU Pedestrian-B model. The downlink network performance of the prototypical IEEE 802.16e network is compared to a 3GPP UMTS high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) system of similar physical dimensions. System simulation results for the prototypical IEEE 802.16e network considered show-when frequency-selective scheduling is not applied-that the IEEE 802.16e downlink has similar throughput performance as HSDPA for a 70/30 TDD DL/UL frame split but approximately 40%-50% higher spectral efficiency, although control channel overhead and uplink capacity limitation remain significant open issues for further study