Performance Evaluation of Antenna Diversity Schemes on Mobile WiMAX Systems

Antenna diversity is a well-known technique to increase data rate and coverage in fading environments, and it can be applied both at the transmitter or at the receiver side of a transmission link. New broadband wireless systems, such as Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard), rely on several antenna diversity approaches like Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC), Interference Rejection Combining (IRC) and SpaceTime-Code (STC) in order to improve the quality and efficiency of the radio access. However, inclusion of multiple antennas in a system must take into account the higher hardware investment, complexity and its impact on network optimization. In this context, this paper aims at a comparative performance evaluation of MRC, IRC and STC diversity schemes employed in mobile WiMAX systems. We focus on a simulator-based system-level analysis in order to assess the network capacity gains achievable with antenna diversity.