Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and

Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454

Performance Analysis Of Wimax 802.16e Physical Layer Using

Digital Modulation Techniques And Code Rates
Valmik Tilwari1, Aparna Singh Kushwah2
Department of Electronics and Communication University Institute of Technology, RGPV Bhopal (M.P.), India

Abstract
WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for
Microwave Access) is a new broadband wireless
communication technologies that provide very
high speed
data over long distance and the core
technique for fourth-generation (4G) wireless
mobile communication. It is big advantage over
other technology like free to use, high data rate,
long range communication and cost effective. for
these reasons, WiMAX has attracted so much
interest from researchers in the past few years.
WiMAX technology is actually based on the
standards that making the possibility to delivery
last mile broadband access as a substitute to
conventional cable and DSL lines.
This paper mainly based WiMAX
physical layer to understand the effect of various
Modulation techniques, Coding rates, cyclic prefix
factors and OFDM symbol on the system
performance. Reed-Solomon encoding and
convolution coding is used for improving system
performance .Performance analysis of bit error
rate vs. signal to noise ratio study the Bit Error
Rate (BER) performance of this model.

Keywords-

Worldwide
Interoperability
for
Microwaves
Access
(WiMAX),
Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Physical
Layer (PHY). Coding data rate, Additive White
Gaussian Noise (AWGN), Bit Error Rate (BER),
Interleaving, Modulation.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave

Access (WiMAX) is currently one of the best
technologies in wireless. The Institute of Electrical
and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802 committee,
which sets networking standards such as Ethernet
(802.3) and Wi-Fi (802.11), has published a set of
standards that define WiMAX. IEEE 802.16-2004
(also known as Revision D) was published in 2004
for fixed applications; 802.16 Revision E (which
adds mobility) is publicized in July 2005. The
WiMAX Forum is an industry body formed to
promote the IEEE 802.16 standard and perform
interoperability testing. The WiMAX Forum has
adopted certain profiles based on the 802.16
standards for interoperability testing and WiMAX
certification. These operate in the 2.5GHz, 3.5GHz
and 5.8GHz frequency bands, which typically are
licensed by various government authorities. WiMAX,

is based on an RF technology called Orthogonal

Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which is
a very effective means of transferring data when
carriers of width of 5MHz or greater can be used.
Below 5MHz carrier width, current CDMA based
3G systems is comparable to OFDM in terms of
performance. WiMAX is a standard-based wireless
technology that provides high throughput broadband
connections over long distance. WiMAX can be used
for a number of applications, including last mile
broadband connections, hotspots and high-speed
connectivity for business customers. It provides
wireless metropolitan area network (MAN)
connectivity at speeds up to 70 Mbps and the
WiMAX base station on the average can cover
between 5 to 10 km. In this paper a model
implementation is MATLAB on which BER
calculation for various digital modulation schemes
like BPSK, QPSK, 8-QAM, and 16-PSK. The
convolution coding and interleaving is applied to
improve BER performance of signal is transmitted
over the AWGN channel for various signal to noise
ratio (SNR) value. To evaluate the performance, for
each SNR level, the received signal was
demodulation and the received data was compared to
the original information. The result of the plot of the
bit error rate versus signal to noise ratio which
provide information about the systems performance.
For the performance analysis of this network
following parameters are chosen:
1) Various modulation techniques,
2) Various Coding rates,
3) Various cyclic prefix factors,
4) Various FFT sizes
Model for the system has been developed
for various modulation schemes and different coding
rates like BPSK , QPSK , QPSK , 16QAM ,
16QAM , 64QAM , 64QAM . And simulated
on MATLAB Simulink R2009. The Model itself
consists of three main components namely
Transmitter, Receiver and Channel. Transmitter and
receiver have taken care of channel coding and
modulation process, whereas channel is modelled as
standard AWGN channel.

II.

WiMAX SIMULATION MODEL

The WiMAX simulation presented in this

paper had been implemented in MATLAB. The
functional stages had been mainly design by using
simulink in MATLAB 7.8.0 (R2009a) version,

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Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454
simulink 7 and communications block set 3 running
on windows XP SP2.
Matlab simulink includes all the mandatory
function blocks as specified by the standard
documents. The WiMAX PHY in the transmitter,
binary input data sequence is taken forward error
correction (FEC), and interleaving is done to provide
frequency diversity. The sequence is encoded by a
convolution encoder. Then interleaving is applied to
randomize the occurrence of bit errors pair to
increase performance. After interleaving, the (0, 1)
binary values are converted to symbol value, on
which digital modulation scheme is applied.
Previously, multi-carrier systems were implemented
through the use of separate local oscillator. This was
both inefficient and costly with the advent of cheap
powerful processors; the sub-carriers can now be
implemented by the FFT which keep tones to
orthogonal with each other.

III.

WIMAX PHYSICAL LAYER

The role of the PHY layer is to encode the

binary digits that represent MAC frames into signals
and to transmit and receive these signals across the
communication media. The WiMAX PHY layer is
based on OFDM; which is used to enable high-speed
data, video, and multimedia communications and is
used by a variety of commercial broadband systems.
The PHY layer; shown in Fig.1, in WiMAX includes
various functional stages: (i) forward error correction
(FEC): including; randomizing, channel encoding,
rate matching, interleaving, and symbol mapping; (ii)
OFDM symbol in frequency domain, and (iii)
conversion of the OFDM symbol from the frequency
domain to the time domain .
B. Randomizer
Randomization process is used to minimize
the possibility of transmissions of nonmodulated
subcarriers. The process of randomization is
performed on each burst of data on the downlink and
uplink. This is implemented with a Pseudo Random
Binary Sequence (PRBS) generator which uses a 15stage shift register with a generator polynomial of 1+
x^14 + x^15 with XOR gates in feedback
configuration as shown in Fig.2.

Receiver
Section

Transmitter Section
Input Binary
Sequence

Data Out

Randomaization

Derandamizer

BlockEncoder

Block
Decoder

Convolution
Coding

Convolution
Decoding

Interleaving

Deinterleaving

IQ Mapping

IQ Demapping

Modulation

Demodulation

Serial to
Parallel Con.

Parallel to
Serial conv.

IFFT

FFT

Add Cyclic
Prefix

Remove
cyclic Prefix

Parallel to
Serial conv.

Serial to
Parallel Con.
AWGN
Channel

Channel section

Fig 1: Block diagram of Wimax model

Fig 2: Randomizer

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Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454
C. Reed-Solomon (RS) Encoder
The encoding process for RS
encoder is based on Galois Field Computations to do
the calculations of the redundant bits. Galois Field is
widely used to represent data in error control coding
and is denoted by GF .WIMAX uses a fixed RS
Encoding technique based on GF(28) which is
denoted as RS(N = 255, K =239, T = 8)
Where:
N = Number of Byte
K = Data Bytes
T = Number of bytes corrected
Eight tail bits are added to the data just
before it is presented to the Reed Solomon Encoder
stage. This stage requires two polynomials for its
operation called code generator polynomial g(x) and
field generator polynomial p(x). The code generator
polynomial is used for generating the Galois Field
Array whereas the field generator polynomial is used
to calculate the redundant information bits which are
appended at the start of the output data. These
polynomials are defined by the standard as below:
Code Generator Polynomial:
p(x)=x^8+x^4+x^3+x^2+1
Field Generator Polynomial:
g(x) = (x +.0) (x +.1 ) (x +.2) (x +.3)
The properties of Reed-Solomon codes
make them suitable to applications where errors
occur in bursts. Reed-Solomon error correction is a
coding scheme which works by first constructing a
polynomial from the data symbols to be transmitted,
and then sending an oversampled version of the
polynomial instead of the original symbols
themselves. A Reed-Solomon code is specified as RS
(n, k ,t) with l-bit symbols. This means that the
encoder takes k data symbols of l bits each and adds
2t parity symbols to construct an n- symbol
codeword. Thus, n, k and t can be defined as: n:
number of bytes after encoding; k: number of data
bytes before encoding, and t: number of data bytes
that can be corrected. The error correction ability of
any RS code is determined by (n k), the measure of
redundancy in the block.
D. Convolution Encoder (CC)
After the RS encoding
process, data bits are further encoded by a binary CC,
which has a native rate of 1/2 and a constraint length
of 7; Fig.3 The generator polynomials used to derive
its two output code bits, denoted X and Y, are
specified in the following expressions: G1 = 171
OCT for X, and G2 = 133 OCT for Y.

Fig 3: Convolution Encoder (CC)

E. Interleaving
Interleaving in its most basic form can be
described as a randomizer but it is quite different
from the randomizer in the sense that it does not
change the state of the bits but it works on the
position of bits. The block interleaver interleaves all
encoded data bits with a block size corresponding to
the number of coded bits per OFDM symbol. The
number of coded bits depends on the modulation
technique used in the physical layer. Wimax 802.16e
supports 4 modulation techniques and is adaptive in
the selection of a particular technique based on the
channel condition and data rate. WiMAX 802.16e
defines two permutations for the interleaver.
The first permutation is defined by the formula:
mk = (Ncbps/12) * mod(k,12) + floor(k/12).
The second permutation is defined by the formula:
S = ceil (Ncpc/2)
Jk = s floor (mk/s) + (mk + Ncbps floor
(12mk/Ncbps)) mod(s)
Where:
K = Index of coded bit before first permutation
mk = Index of coded bit after first permutation
jk = Index of coded bit after second permutation
Ncpc = Number of coded bits per carrier
Ncbps = Number of coded bits per symbol.
Index of bits represented by jk is used during the
modulation process.
F. Adaptive Modulation
All
wireless
communication
systems use a modulation scheme to map coded bits
to a form that can be effectively transmitted over the
communication channel. WiMAX supports a variety
of modulation and coding schemes and allows for the
scheme to change on a burst-by-burst basis per link,
depending on channel and interference conditions.
G. OFDM Modulation
OFDM is a multicarrier modulation technique, which
provides high bandwidth efficiency because the
carriers are
orthogonal to each other and multiple carriers share
the data
among
themselves. The main advantage of this
transmission
Technique is their robustness to channel fading. The
serial to parallel converter receive the M serial bits to

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Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454
be transmitted, and those bits are divided into sub
blocks of mn bits each sub block. Those N sub blocks
will be mapped by the constellation modulator using
Gray codification, this way an + jbn values are
obtained nth constellation of the modulator. The
modulation scheme converts input data into complex
valued constellation points, according to a given
constellation, 4-QAM, 16-QAM, and 32- QAM and
so on. The Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT)
transforms the signals from the frequency domain to
the time domain. The cyclic prefix (CP) is a copy of
the last N samples from the IFFT, which are placed at
the beginning of the OFDM frame;
usually used to combat the inter-symbol interference
(ISI) and inter-channel-interference (ICI) introduced
by the multipath channel through which the signal is
propagated.

WIMAX standard. The following subsection presents

the simulation results using the model in fig. 3, 4, 5,
6, 7, 8 and 9 for AWGN channel. BER Verses SNR.
BER is the number of error bits occurs within one
second in transmitted signal. BER define
mathematically as follow.

When the transmitter and receivers medium are good

in a particular time and Signal-to-Noise Ratio is high,
and then Bit Error rate is very low. In our thesis
simulation we generated random signal when noise
occurs after that we got the value of Bit error rate.
SNR= Signal Power/Noise Power
Bit error rate for BPSK1/2

10

-1

10

-2

Bit error rate

Four different duration of cyclic prefix are available

in the standard. Being G the ratio of CP time to
OFDM symbol time, this ratio can be equal to 1/32,
1/6, 1/8 and 1/4 the receiver blocks are basically the
inverse of the transmitter blocks. When
communicating over a wireless radio channel the
received signal cannot be simply modelled as a copy
of the transmitted signal corrupted by noise. At the
receiving side, a reverse process (including
deinterleaving and decoding) is executed to obtain
the original data bits. As the deinterleaving process
only changes the order of received data, the error
probability is intact. When passing through the CC
decoder and the RS-decoder, some errors may be
corrected, which results in lower error rates.

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

10

4
5
Signal to noise ratio

Fig.3. The BER results versus SNR using

BPSK
modulation schemes and coding
rates
Bit error rate for QPSK1/2

10

-1

10

-2

Bit error rate

H. AWGN (Additive white Gaussian noise) Channel

The AWGN channel block adds
white Gaussian noise to real or complex input signal.
When the input signal is real, this block add real
Gaussian noise and produces a real output signal.
Additive white Gaussian noise is a channel model in
which the only impairment to communication is a
linear addition of wideband or white noise with a
constant spectral density (expressed as watts per hertz
of bandwidth) and a Gaussian distribution of
amplitude. The AWGN channel is a good model for
many satellite and deep space communication links.
If the average received power is P[w] and the noise
power spectral density is No [W/Hz], the AWGN
channel capacity is following equation
Cawgn = W log2 (1+P/NoW) bits/Hz
Where P/NoW is received signal-to-noise ratio
(SNR)

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

10

4
5
Signal to noise ratio

Fig. 4. The BER results versus SNR using

IV.

SIMULATION RESULTS

The performance analysis of WiMAX 802.26e

physical layer model, simulation is performed by
considering the standard test vectors specified in the

QPSK
modulation schemes and coding
rates

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Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454
Bit error rate for QPSK3/4

Bit error rate for 64-QAM2/3

10

10

-1

-1

10

-2

10

10

Bit error rate

Bit error rate

-2

10

-3

10

-3

10

-4

10
-4

10

-5

10

-5

10

6
8
10
Signal to noise ratio

12

14

10
15
Signal to noise ratio

20

25

Fig.8. The BER results versus SNR using 64-QAM

modulation schemes and 2/3 coding rates

Fig. 5. The BER results versus SNR using QPSK

modulation schemes and coding rates

Bit error rate for 64-QAM3/4

10

Bit error rate for 16-QAM1/2

10

-1

10

-1

10

Bit error rate

-2

Bit error rate

-2

10

10

-3

10

-4

10

-3

10

-5

10

-4

10

6
8
10
Signal to noise ratio

12

V.

Bit error rate for 16-QAM3/4

10

-1

10

-2

Bit error rate

20

25

14

Fig. 6. The BER results versus SNR using 16-QAM

modulation schemes and coding rates

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

10

10
15
Signal to noise ratio

Fig. 9. The BER results versus SNR using 64-QAM

modulation schemes and coding rates

-5

10

10
15
Signal to noise ratio

20

25

CONCLUSION AND FUTURE

WORKS

In this paper, we have presented the

WiMAX PHY layer model using simulink of the
different modulation technique and coding rate gives
an impression about the transmission power required
for different modulation technique in the WiMAX
system for BER of 10^-5 the BPSK 1/2system can be
utilized after 3.49db SNR value. Where the QPSK
1/2 system can be used for SNR about 7db, the power
increase of transmission by 3.51db .In QPSK the
SNR 11.2db, 16-QAM SNR 12db, 16-QAM
SNR 17.46db, 64-QAM SNR value is 22.63db
This analysis can be used further initial analysis of
other modulation techniques, variable coding rate and
different types of channel condition used . The results
performance is displayed in the figure in terms of the
BER versus Es/No, db.

Fig. 7. The BER results versus SNR using 16-QAM

modulation schemes and coding rates

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Valmik Tilwari, Aparna Singh Kushwah / International Journal of Engineering Research and
Applications (IJERA)
ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com
Vol. 3, Issue 4, Jul-Aug 2013, pp.1449-1454
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Venkateswaran.
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