Deployment of 2.3GHz WiMAX 802.16e Wave 2

system in an Unique Urban Environment

A New User Experience!

Andrew Meehan

An initiative ofInstitute of Microelectronics and Wireless Systems

National University of Ireland, Maynooth

System Introduction - what we have!

• 2 Base Station (WBS) network supporting 802.16e standard with beam-forming and MIMO ability with a front arc of 120⁰, at approx 20m height, operating a max Tx power of 1.3W.

• System operates at 2.3GHz with 2 x 10MHz channel allocations.

• Alcatel- Lucent supplied with an Operational and Management system (OMC) capable of handling 600,000 users.

• Initial investment of 100 clients, between desktop and PCIMCA units, to be spread around campus.

• System has full handover ability between the 2 Base stations

• AAA (Authorisation, Authentication, Accounting) severer allowing full QoS setup.

• Cisco Home Agent for internet and routing support.

Aims and expectations of the system

• To provide broadband data to staff and students on campus and in the town of Maynooth.

• Expectation of up to 6Mb DL in a 1km radius.• Expectation of up to 1 Mb DL outside this ie up to 2km away.

• To support research programmes in the areas of• Next Generation Networking schemes;• Use cases for free broadband data services;• Management of mobile and fixed services;• Cognitive and reconfigurable radio networks;• Wide area multimedia sensor networks.

• To provide access to our online education tools such as Moodle

• To share this unique public facility with other academic and company users.

Use cases• Student use:

• Found that on-line gaming was an issue in particular for fast paced games such as Halo 3 due to the very long ping times on the system.

• Streaming video such as YouTube had no issues.• DL speeds of up to 7Mb in some areas.

• Mobile Handover:• Found that there was seamless transitions between the 2 base

stations.• Continued to download data while passing the base stations.• This was consistent even while doing drive testing ( at the speed limit!)

• Remote System Management –• Currently have a single base station in the Marine Institute, Oranmore,

Co. Galway approx 250km distance from OMC.

Good things about the system!• Very good reliability of the overall system

• System was easy to deploy - CPE’s were plug and play, base stations just plugged in and turned on!

• Seamless handover between base stations at the 2 different frequencies.

• Excellent connectivity in the coverage area.

• Easy access to the data on the modems.

• It works in a plane!

Issues encountered• Early version of the Rev e management software

• Significant issues with the supply of modems

• Lack of suitable PCIMCA or USB style devices for full mobile access.

• Plenty of connectivity issues encountered – the term bleeding edge was never truer!!

Projects Involvements• Coverage Mapping of the North Campus

• Use of long term data collection for research – 15 months of data at this time.

• SMART Bay with the Marine Institute and Intel for broadband connectivity of offshore marine sensors – significant distance achieved!!.

Future plans• System software upgrade to latest rev giving us MIMO and beam forming

abilites.

• Newest generations of modems leading to increased connectivity.

• Continue the long term data collection for research into why the parameters change so much.

• Continue SMART Bay with the Marine Institute, look to get data from the remote sensors and improve the range.

• Ask, nicely, for an extension to the current license from ComReg.

Thanks to• Dr Ronan Farrell of the IMWS.• ComReg – Kevin Kennedy• HEAnet – Eoin Kenny and David Wilson• NUIM Computer Center – Liam Burbridge, Patrick O’Regan, Brain Carolan,

Dervilla O’Keefe.• Electronic Engineering – Yuriy Kuznetsov, John Maloco, Willie Flynn, Frank

Devitt.

• A large support team from Alcatel-Lucent

Questions?

Combination walk and drive testing

Campus Coverage Map

Coverage Map form a single WBS transmitting at 1 WattHave a single CPE at 2km receiving >1Mb DL

Expectations for coverage 1km

Expectations for coverage 2km

Coverage Map from a plane

Marine Institute, Oranmore

Marine Institute, RSSI map (red good, blue bad)

Example of files

Sampled every second, max of 60 mins, closed then new file opened, repeat

What the data looks like, 44 parameters collected on each poll

Example of Halo 3

Example of graphed data 24 hours