I Throughput and Coverage Evaluation of a Deployed WiMAX Network in Ghana

The massive development and investment in the Ghanaian telecommunication sector and the act of deregulation in the industry has necessitated the deployment of Worldwide Inter-operability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) in the 25002690 MHz band to help serve the ever increasing needs of broadband internet subscribers in the country. In order to achieve the goal of providing comprehensive network coverage and high capacity WiMAX networks, a realistic physical layer performance evaluation of WiMAX has to be done to enable network operators understand WiMAX performance and provide a guide for future network deployment in Ghana. This paper undertakes a realistic performance evaluation of a pilot WiMAX network in the urban centers of Accra in Ghana. The physical layer performance of the deployed WiMAX systems is evaluated in terms of measured throughput and received power (RSS). This allows for a direct comparison with simulated results. Due to inherent system losses, it was realized that, not even a system with an optimum 2x2 adaptive MIMO antenna configuration was able to achieve the simulated throughput of 8.45Mbps. The results in the study show that, it is possible achieve a throughput of approximately 6.10Mbps downlink and 2.08Mbps uplink with the most robust modulation scheme, and a speed of 60mph in a densely populated urban environment making WiMAX a bright prospect for large-scale deployments in Ghana.