Analysis of MIMO Systems used in planning a 4G-WiMAX Network in Ghana

with the increasing demand for mobile data services, Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) is emerging as one of the fastest growing areas within mobile communications. Innovative wireless communication systems, such as WiMAX, are expected to offer highly reliable broadband radio access in order to meet the increasing demands of emerging high speed data and multimedia services. In Ghana, deployment of WiMAX technology has recently begun. Planning these high capacity networks in the presence of multiple interferences in order to achieve the aim of enabling users enjoy cheap and reliable internet services is a critical design issue. This paper has used a deterministic approach for simulating the Bit-Error-Rate (BER) of initial MIMO antenna configurations which were considered in deploying a high capacity 4G-WiMAX network in Ghana. The radiation pattern of the antenna used in the deploying the network has been simulated with Genex-Unet and NEC and results presented. An adaptive 4x4 MIMO antenna configuration with optimally suppressed sidelobes has been suggested for future network deployment since the adaptive 2x2 MIMO antenna configuration, which was used in the initial network deployment provides poor estimates for average BER performance as compared to 4x4 antenna configuration which seem less affected in the presence of multiple interferers. Keywords—WiMAX; Performance; BER; MIMO; Interference