Wimax - Potential Commercial Off-The-Shelf Solution for Tactical Mobile Mesh Communications

The Army is evaluating the capabilities´ of emerging technologies based on the IEEE 802.16 standard as a potential commercial off-the-shelf solution to support the communication requirements of the future warfighter. This paper evaluates the mesh mode defined in the IEEE 802.16d (fixed WiMax) standard to determine if it is technically feasible for WiMax to support mobile mesh networking by proposing adaptations to the MAC scheduler and the PHY layer profile as well as organizing the network into small clusters interconnected by a MANET routing protocol. The proposed adaptations are evaluated using system parameters defined in the context of a military scenario. Observations and findings warrant further research in integrating WiMax technology into the Army´s communication architecture. Additionally, this paper includes the results of a mobility experiment using fixed WiMax equipment.