Radio Planning and Field Trial Measurement of a Deployed 4G WiMAX Network in an Urban Sub-Saharan African Environment

• DOI: 10.4018/jitn.2013070101
• Publication Date: 2013-11-15T20:43:58Z
• Authors: E.T. Tchao; W.K. Ofosu; K. Diawuo
• Keywords: 11. Sustainability; 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; 02 engineering and technology; 7. Clean energy

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology has gained growing interest due to its applications and advantages. It is fast emerging as a last-mile problem solution for broadband access technology. This paper presents operation scenarios for the deployment of a Fourth Generation (4G) WiMAX system in a typical sub-Saharan African environment. This has been specified based on real world conditions considering the regulatory rules specified by the National Communication Authority (NCA) for radio frequency spectrum utilization in the 2.6GHz licensed band in Ghana. Appropriate propagation models and Network planning tools have been used to design the final radio network plan. Coverage prediction has been performed using Genex-U-Net to achieve the main aim of providing coverage in the predefined areas of Accra and Tema, Ghana. Simulation results for different downlink/uplink ratios with different frequency reuse schemes have been presented. A total of 11 base stations have been suggested to provide coverage of -92dBm using 32 sectors 4 transmit 4 receive (4T4R) adaptive Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) antenna configuration within the Accra and Tema municipality. Finally the system performance is evaluated through field trial measurement and the results presented.