Analysis of Propagation Models for WiMAX at 3.5 GHz

Abstract: Nowadays the Worldwide Interoperability of Microwave Access (WiMAX) technology becomes popular and receives growing acceptance as a Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) system. WiMAX has potential success in its line-of-sight (LOS) and non line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions which operating below 11 GHz frequency. There are going to be a surge all over the world for the deployment of WiMAX networks. Estimation of path loss is very important in initial deployment of wireless network and cell planning. Numerous path loss (PL) models (e.g. Okumura Model, Hata Model) are available to predict the propagation loss, but they are inclined to be limited to the lower frequency bands (up to 2 GHz). In this thesis we compare and analyze five path loss models (i.e. COST 231 Hata model, ECC-33 model, SUI model, Ericsson model and COST 231 Walfish-Ikegami model) in different receiver antenna heights in urban, suburban and rural environments in NLOS condition. Our main concentration in this thesis is to find out a suitable model for different environments to provide guidelines for cell planning of WiMAX at cellular frequency of 3.5 GHz.