WiMAX in Coastal Traffic and Performance Prediction in a Geographically Challenging Environment

Abstract

This thesis takes upon itself to describe the medium of the radio channel for a WiMAX installation in a difficult environment. Furthermore it investigates the possibility of modifying the WiMAX standard in order to increase per- formance in such an environment. Channel estimators are crucial in optimizing throughput in WiMAX. Their performance is dependent on the amount of information in the pilot subcarriers of WiMAX. A way of adding information to the channel esti- mators without taking more of the bandwidth is to use a model in series with the data estimates. An already existing Kalman filter based algorithm for radio channel estimation is studied and compared to a WiMAX model. Modifications are suggested to fit the WiMAX signals. To extend a network fast in areas where there is little or no infrastructure to begin with is a task that can be performed by ad hoc network solutions. A statistical model for outage in ad hoc networks is studied and an evalua- tion on WiMAX s capability of operating in an Ad hoc network structure is performed.