intRoduction SIMULATION DESIGN OF WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS FOR DIGITAL UNIVERSITIES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES1

Developing countries have lagged behind much of the world in wired communication infrastructures, which are either under-developed or not existing. Suburban, rural and inaccessible areas, in such countries, have made up this gap through the use of wireless communications. The generally available 2nd and 3rd Generation wireless infrastructures, however, do not meet the communication requirements of digital universities, which are not limited to high-speed and broadband connectivity. Digital universities, indeed, generate video streaming and VoIP traffics that require the ability to transmit real-time, interactive video and auditory with low-delay and high-priority. Such features can be met by evolving technologies such as WiMAX and LTE. Among the two, WiMAX better meets the requirements of digital universities in developing countries, being low-cost and easily adaptable to suburban, rural and inaccessible areas. In this paper, a simulation approach is presented to design WiMAX infrastructures for digital universities and optimize their cost and quality of service. The approach is based on Distributed Simulation (DS) and on the use of specific simulation tools (wDSEnv and wDSLang) that together give a complete software suite to overcome the difficulties and the cost of conventional commercial DS.