Link Performance of WiMAX PUSC

Link performance of WiMAX (802.16e) downlink and uplink using partial usage subchannelization (PUSC) is evaluated through link-level simulations. WiMAX using single transmit and two receive antennas is compared to a WiMAX system with four transmit and two receive antennas with closed-loop beamforming in the downlink and one transmit and eight receive antennas in the uplink. Two dimensional channel estimators are applied to estimate the channel frequency response using pilot symbols. Spatial channel modeling method is used to model the antenna correlations between multiple transmit and the multiple receive antennas. Link simulations demonstrate that significant link performance improvements can be achieved using closed-loop beamforming for downlink and using more receive antennas for uplink.