Signal Processing Requirements for WiMAX (802.16e) Base Station

802.16e provides specifications for non line of sight, mobile wireless communications in the frequency range of 2-6 GHz. It is well implemented by using OFDMA as its physical layer scheme. The OFDM symbol time (sT) is to be selected depending on the channel conditions, available bandwidth and, simulations provide a means of selecting right values of sTin different channel conditions. Additionally it has been shown that certain values of sT outperform others in all conditions, thus invalidating their use. Moreover, a solution proposed by INTEL is also analyzed. One of the major requirements of OFDM is high synchronization. Detecting the timing offset of a new mobile user, entering the network, which is not time aligned using cross-correlation and ‘auto-correlation’ in time domain and cross-correlation in frequency domain at the base station has been simulated. Results point that the processing load can be significantly reduced by using frequency domain correlation of the received data or by using ‘auto-correlation’ followed by cross-correlation on localized data. The use of adaptive antenna system in 802.16e improves the system performance, where beamforming is implemented in the direction of desired user. Capon’s method and MUSIC method have been simulated to compute the direction of arrival for OFDMA uplink. A new user, while in the ranging process, transmits data with unknown time offset and unknown direction. The thesis describes the procedure to find the two unknown one after another.