Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering 2008

May 13-15, 2008 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Performance Study on Optimal Boundary per WiMAX Cell

Najma @ Thinzar Oo, Sidek Karim, Mohiuddin Ahmed Department of Computer Science Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology Jalan Gombak, 53100, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Email: mohiuddin@iiu.edu.my
capability for WiMAX transmission by using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique [1]. WiMAX 802.16c dealt mainly with updates in the 10GHz to 66GHz spectrum range and it also addressed the issues of performance evaluation, testing and detailed system profiling. The 802.11e-2005 was released as a true mobile WiMAX standard which enables high-speed signal handoffs necessary for communications with users moving at vehicular speed [2]. The rest of this paper is organized as follows: first we describe the simulation module and the environments; second we analyze the simulation results and evaluate the WiMAX network performance; thirdly discussion, and finally concluding remarks. II. SIMULATION MODELS We have developed three different simulation models using NS-2 Tcl scripting. The trace files produced from the scripts were analyzed using AWK scripts and the output then was used for plotting using gnuplot. The following simulations were performed inclusive of; 1) WiMax performance measurement for different number of mobile nodes, 2) WiMax performance measurement for various distances, 3) WiMax performance measurement for different mobile nodes movements.

Abstract
WiMAX can be considered as a new alternative technology for the masses in most of the countries in the world. This paper presents the results of WiMAX performance study on optimal boundary per WiMAX cell using NS-2 network simulator under different WiMAX network models. The Performance metrics measured in this study inclusive of packet loss, throughput, and delay. From the results, it could be deduced that IEEE 802.16 networks perform differently for different network traffic, number of mobile nodes, distance from base station and mobile speed. These results can be used as a guide line when implementing WiMAX for developed urban areas like suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. I. INTRODUCTION Wireless technology has become among the most exciting area in telecommunication and computer networking. The rapid growth of WiFi (IEEE 802.11 standards) enabled mobile devices, cellular mobile phones, and wireless broadband Internet in generating tremendous changes in the way people live. The reduction of cost of Integrated Circuit (IC) and sophisticated technology in integrating very complex functionalities into a single module have increased the level of availability for wireless Internet access. 802.11 standards or WiFi can be considered as ubiquitous technology since it gained high popularity among mobile devices. The latter wireless standards known as WiMAX (IEEE 802.16 standards) where as the original standard dealt with radios operating in spectrum between 10GHz and 66GHz and currently it is considered as part of third generation (3G) communication standards. The second version of WiMAX is the 802.11a where spectrum ranges of 2GHz to 11GHz were added to the standards. This version incorporated non-line-of-sight (NLOS)
978-1-4244-1692-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE

Figure 1. n-number of WiMAX subscribers per cell

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Datagram Protocol (UDP). The number of nodes simulated is stated in the Table 2.

Figure 2. n-meter of WiMAX subscribers from base station

TABLE 2: MAXIMUM NUMBER OF NODES PER SIMULATION. Simulation Type Maximum number of Nodes TCP - Packet Loss 160 UDP - Packet Loss 200 UDP - Throughput 150 UDP - End-to-end delay 150 UDP End-to-end delay 150

Figure 3. n-number of WiMAX subscribers moving ad v-ms-1 speed

The three simulations were set up with the following parameters:

TABLE 1: WIRELESS NODE AND TOPOLOGY PARAMETERS Parameter Value Wireless node parameters Channel type WirelessChannel Propagation model TwoWayGround Interface type OFDM MAC layer protocol Mac/802_16/BS Routing protocol DSDV Interface Queue type Queue/DropTail/PriQueue Maximum packet in ifq 50 Antenna model Antenna/OmniAntenna Link layer type LL Topology parameters X-dimension 1100 m Y-dimension 1100 m Total simulation time 300 sec WiMAX Cell Radius 500 m Traffic pattern UDP agent with CBR traffic TCP agent with FTP traffic Packet size 1500 bytes Data rate 11Mbps Bandwidth 11Mbps

The variation in number of nodes is due to the NS-2 frameworks constraint and the hardware limitation. The number of nodes was set up as such since NS-2 returned error messages such as segmentation fault as the number of nodes were increased. Simulation (2) dealt with the measurement of WiMAX performance over different distances of WiMAX subscriber stations from the base station in Figure 2. The simulation traces were used to measure the packet loss, throughput, and average end-to-end delay of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) traffic. The maximum distance of subscriber station from the base station simulated is stated in the Table 3 below:
TABLE 3: MAXIMUM DISTANCE OF NODE FROM WIMAX BASE STATION PER SIMULATION. Simulation Type Maximum Distance of Nodes from Base Station (meter) TCP - Packet Loss 800 UDP - Packet Loss 800

The maximum distance of the mobile nodes from the base station was set up as such since the topology was set up with 50 nodes placed at different distances, ranging from 70 meters up to 800 meters from the base station. Packet sent and losses were captured for each node based on its location. Simulation (3) was developed in order to measure the effects of mobility on WiMAX network as shown in Figure 3. This simulation is intended to capture and analyze mobile nodes speed as an independent variable and throughput and end-to-end delay as the dependent variables in Table 4.
TABLE 4: MAXIMUM SPEED OF NODES PER SIMULATION. Simulation Type Maximum Speed (v) of mobile node (ms-1) UDP Throughput 40 UDP - Packet Loss 40

Simulation (1) covers the performance of WiMAX cell when the number of mobile nodes was increasing as shown in Figure 1. The simulation measured the packet loss, throughput, and average end-to-end delay of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User

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III. SIMULATION RESULTS & EVALUATION OF WiMAX NETWORK PERFORMANCE

In simulation (1), the characteristics of packet losses are investigated through simulations of IEEE 802.16 networks on different network settings with UDP/CBR traffic and TCP/FTP respectively. UDP has likely been used for real-time applications, such as video and audio while TCP is popular for HTTP and FTP applications. For WiMAX networks with UDP/CBR and TCP/FTP traffic, we examined nine different cases with 1, 3, 5, 7, 25, 50, 75, 100 and 150 mobile nodes. In networks with UDP/CBR traffic, shown in Figure 4, the number of packet sent, received and drop rate are shown; the drop rate increases as the number of mobile nodes in the network goes higher. However, the TCP/FTP traffic, shown in Figure 5, attains the full utilization of the network resources up to a certain point; hence plotting of the number of packets sent increases almost linearly. But the packet drop rate due to bandwidth request collision goes higher as the number of mobile nodes increases. The end-to-end delay for both traffic patterns, shown in Figure 6, is analyzed based on the above mentioned cases, the delay time increases as the topology becomes bigger and apparently the UDP networks delay is much lower than the TCP traffic since UDP achieves minimized transmission delay by omitting the connection setup process, flow control, and retransmission. [3]

packets sent goes significantly lower as the node located further from the base station. However, in the TCP/FTP case, as shown in Figure 8, the performance graph is almost constant regardless of the nodes distance from base station while the node is located in the coverage range.

Figure 5. Number of mobile nodes vs. Packet loss (TCP/FTP traffic)

Figure 6. Number of mobile nodes vs. Average end-to-end delay (UDP/CBR and TCP/FTP traffic)

Figure 4. Number of mobile nodes vs. Packet loss (UDP/CBR traffic)

In simulation (2), 50 nodes were placed at different distances from the base station and different test cases of UDP/CBR traffic (Figure 7) and TCP/FTP traffic (Figure 8) are examined. The modulation scheme and frequency of the topology was set up to cover 500 meters from base station. The packet sent and drop parameters have been analyzed based on the simulation results. From Figure 7, the number of UDP/CBR
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Figure 7. Distance of subscriber station from base station vs. packet loss (UDP/CBR)

IV. DISCUSSION Based on the analysis of the simulation (1), it can be concluded that WiMAX network simulated could support up to 100 concurrent nodes in a cell for TCP/FTP traffic before it showed significant network performance degradation. This signifies that if there were fewer nodes transmitting and receiving TCP/FTP packets, the network would be fully utilized and the network is congested once additional nodes joined the cell. For UDP/CBR traffic, the simulation showed exponential increase of packets for the cell, hence conclusion can be drawn that WiMAX is better suited for UDP/CBR traffic rather than TCP/FTP traffic. This result also could be extrapolated that WiMAX has high potential in providing multimedia streaming applications [4]. Simulation (2) demonstrated reliable TCP/FTP transmission of packets inside the cell up to the 500 meter. In the context of UDP/CBR traffic, significant packet loss occurred as the node located further away from the cell. Both cases prove that WiMAX is suitable for wide area networks implementation and also proves the reliability of TCP connections till the last mile. According to the results analysed in Table 6, we conclude that the movement of the mobile nodes doesnt have much effect on the network performance when the nodes are in coverage range of the base station. However, the mobile nodes speed will greatly affect the network performance once the handover is involved [5]. V. CONCLUSION Hence, with wide coverage area introduced in simulation (2), it could be concluded that it is also possible to deploy UDP based application for the mass using WiMAX network in urban areas. The performance of WiMAX cell could be further enhanced with proper changes made to the antenna gain, MIMO/BF gain, output power of BS, TDD ratio, type of modulation, noise figure, CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) output power, CPE antenna gain, and receiver gain of BS [6]. REFERENCES
[1] Sanders, 76 T. WiMAX/802.16 Revealed. Retrieve:

Figure 8. Distance of subscriber station from base station vs. packet loss (TCP/FTP) TABLE 5: THROUGHPUT FOR UDP/CBR TRAFFIC ACHIEVED WITH THE RESPECTIVE NUMBER OF NODES. Number of nodes 1 3 5 7 25 50 75 100 150 Throughput (Mbps) 8.270 8.213 8.204 8.200 7.878 7.683 8.096 7.893 7.782 %Data rate 75% 74.66% 74.58% 74.55% 71.6% 69.8% 80.96% 71.75% 70.75%

Mobility has become the real potential of wireless networks. Our third simulation examined the effects of mobile nodes speed towards network performance. The simulation is set up as a network of 50 mobile nodes with UDP/CBR traffic as shown in Table 6. Parameters such as throughput and average end-to-end delay are analysed based on different test cases of speed 0.0, 1.0, 10.0, 20.0, 30.0 and 40.0 m/s.
TABLE 6: THROUGHPUT FOR UDP/CBR TRAFFIC ACHIEVED WITH THE RESPECTIVE SPEED OF THE NODES. Speed (ms-1) 0.0 1.0 10.0 20.0 30.0 40.0 Throughput (Mbps) 8.156 8.1534 8.156 8.156 8.1574 8.1574 Avg end-toend delay (ms) 8.92 8.95 8.84 8.69 8.80 8.80

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WiMAX.Retrieve: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX Nmeth, Z. and Szab, C. A. 2006. Measurements to assist access network design with fixed WiMAX in urban environment. In Proceedings of the 1st international Conference on Access Networks (Athens, Greece, September 04 - 06, 2006). AcessNets '06, vol. 267. ACM, New York, NY, 10. Bakshi, M. VoIP / Multimedia over WiMAX (802.16). Retrieved 20th Aug, 2007 from www.cse.wustl.edu/~jain/cse574-06/ftp/ wimax_voip.pdf

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Chang, C. 2005. A Mobile-IP Based Mobility System for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks. In Proceedings of the 2005 international Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops (June 14 - 17, 2005). ICPPW. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC, 429-435. Cao, M., Ma, W., Zhang, Q., Wang, X., and Zhu, W. 2005. Modelling and performance analysis of the distributed scheduler in IEEE 802.16 mesh mode. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM international Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (UrbanaChampaign, IL, USA, May 25 - 27, 2005). MobiHoc '05. ACM, New York, NY, 78-89.

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