2007-07-11 IEEE C802.

16h-07/071

Project IEEE 802.16 Broadband Wireless Access Working Group <http://ieee802.org/16>

Title Packet error rate measurements for co-channel IEEE 802.16d systems

Date 2007-07-11
Submitted

Source(s) John Sydor, Amir Ghasemi Voice: 613-998-2388

Communications Research Centre Fax: 613-990-8369
3701 Carling Avenue john.sydor@crc.ca
Ottawa, Ontario

Re: Coexistence between IEEE 802.16h systems

Abstract Measurement results on packet error rate of co-channel IEEE 802.16d systems

Purpose To quantify the baseline performance of co-channel IEEE 802.16d systems in absence of any
coexistence mechanisms and to aid in any ongoing co-channel interference discussions

Notice This document has been prepared to assist IEEE 802.16. It is offered as a basis for discussion
and is not binding on the contributing individual(s) or organization(s). The material in this
document is subject to change in form and content after further study. The contributor(s)
reserve(s) the right to add, amend or withdraw material contained herein.

Release The contributor grants a free, irrevocable license to the IEEE to incorporate material contained in
this contribution, and any modifications thereof, in the creation of an IEEE Standards
publication; to copyright in the IEEE’s name any IEEE Standards publication even though it may
include portions of this contribution; and at the IEEE’s sole discretion to permit others to
reproduce in whole or in part the resulting IEEE Standards publication. The contributor also
acknowledges and accepts that this contribution may be made public by IEEE 802.16.

Patent The contributor is familiar with the IEEE 802.16 Patent Policy and Procedures
Policy and <http://ieee802.org/16/ipr/patents/policy.html>, including the statement "IEEE standards may
include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, provided the IEEE receives
Procedures
assurance from the patent holder or applicant with respect to patents essential for compliance
with both mandatory and optional portions of the standard." Early disclosure to the Working
Group of patent information that might be relevant to the standard is essential to reduce the
possibility for delays in the development process and increase the likelihood that the draft
publication will be approved for publication. Please notify the Chair
<mailto:chair@wirelessman.org> as early as possible, in written or electronic form, if patented
technology (or technology under patent application) might be incorporated into a draft standard
being developed within the IEEE 802.16 Working Group. The Chair will disclose this
notification via the IEEE 802.16 web site <http://ieee802.org/16/ipr/patents/notices>.

0
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

Packet error rate measurements for co-channel IEEE 802.16d systems

John Sydor, Amir Ghasemi

Communications Research Centre

Introduction
In order to design and evaluate mechanisms for coexistence of 802.16 systems, it is important to quantify the
effect of interference caused by their co-channel operation. While simulation enables fast and flexible proof-of-
concept experimentation, it generally offers a limited accuracy due to the modeling simplifications as well as the
abstraction of various PHY-layer transceiver imperfections.
As such, this contribution reports the baseline performance of co-channel IEEE 802.16-2004 systems in absence
of any coexistence mechanisms using standard-compliant test equipment. The results are intended to give a
general indication on the sensitivity of IEEE 802.16-2004 modulated spectra to co-channel interference from
similar systems and to provide baseline results which will hopefully support proposals for coexistence
techniques and frequency reuse.

Test setup
The basic setup of the test is shown in Fig. 1 where an IP traffic generator is used to generate and inject the
Ethernet traffic into an 802.16 base station. The packets decoded by the 802.16 subscriber station are then
passed to the traffic generator and compared with the source packets to measure the packet error rate (PER) of
the RF link.
The 802.16 interference is configured and generated with an Agilent E4438C ESG vector signal generator using
the Signal Studio © Software. The modulation and coding scheme (MCS) of the interference is set to QPSK 1/2
throughout the experiment.
In order to obviate the need for synchronization of the signal and interference sources, the Agilent generator is
set to create a continuous interference with a 100% duty cycle. As such, the desired 802.16 signal is subject to
the same interference regardless of the timing offset between the two sources.
The IEEE 802.16d equipment used for this experiment was a pre-WiMAX Vecima (VCOM) OPC3500 base
station and OSR3500 Subscriber Terminal. Both units were modified to allow access to their respective RF
ports.
It was decided to limit the experiment to link configurations considered in the IEEE 802.16h discussions; as
such the equipment was set up to a channel plan given in Table 1.
Table 1: Test setup

Center frequency 3.5 GHz

Bandwidth 7MHz
Frame duration 10ms
DL/UL Ratio 1:1
Cyclic prefix 1/4

1
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

variable
attenuator

Fig. 1 Test setup

Test Results

Sensitivity of Different OFDM Modulation Schemes to CCI

The co-channel sensitivity of IEEE 802.16d modulation formats where of immediate interest in our
experiments. As a secondary interest we were also interested in the sensitivity of the preamble and FCH of the
downlink burst as the integrity of this part of the downlink burst has considerable bearing on the ability of the
receiver to demodulate the payload.
The MCS of the signal was varied from BPSK 1/2 to 64QAM 3/4 while keeping that of the interference at
QPSK 1/2. For each MCS and with a given received signal strength indicator (RSSI), the interference power
was varied to obtain the PER as a function of the carrier to interference plus noise ratio (CINR). The RSSI was
kept fixed throughout these measurements (see below). The PER curves obtained at RSSI of -70dBm with a
fixed packet size of 256 bytes are shown in Fig. 2.

2
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

These results show the well known phenomena that increased modulation complexity has greater sensitivity to
interference. A baseline comparison of these curves to that of AWGN interference alone would be useful, had
we undertaken them in more detail (see below), but comparisons with theoretical works [1,2] indicate that
difference between AWGN performance and co-channel interference are close to being the same. It may be
cautiously correct to assume that increased CCI has the same detrimental effects as increased AWGN.
Two additional characteristics to note, especially in the context of IEEE 802.16h, is that the performance of the
BPSK 1/2 curve may be roughly taken as that of the IEEE 802.16 preamble/FCH which is encoded as BPSK1/2.
Secondly, even in face of relatively high CCI levels, up to rate 1/2 QPSK can be supported with a PER of ~1%
at CINR of 7.5 dB.

Effect of RSSI
In the next experiment, the MCS of the signal was fixed at QPSK 3/4 and the RSSI was varied from -60dBm to
-80dBm. For the given MCS and channel bandwidth, the sensitivity threshold (to AWGN) of the Vecima
WiMAX receiver is about -85dBm. The results plotted in Fig. 3 indicate that the receiver’s CCI performance is
not as sensitive to RSSI in the -60dBm to -70dBm range as it is when the RSSI drops to -80dBm.
Why the radios and OFDM show greater sensitivity to CCI at lower RSSI levels is not immediately obvious.
Part of the answer may lie with the design of the particular radio.

Comparison of AWGN and OFDM Co-Channel Interference

In the final part of the experiment, a noise generator was used in place of the Agilent signal generator. Using
QPSK 3/4 and 128-byte packets for the signal, the PER of a link with a RSSI of -70dBm was measured and
plotted in Fig. 4. The results show that in the region of interest (PER < 20%), a QPSK 1/2 802.16 interference
source is worse compared to pure AWGN noise. These results, in addition to those shown in Figure 2, where
the performance curves did not deviate significantly from those predicted by the referenced AWGN studies,
seem to indicate that Co-channel interference effects due to overlapping OFDM modulation are slightly more
degrading than AWGN (by about 0.5 dB in this case).

Conclusions
This work undertook an examination of IEEE 802.16 sensitivity to co-channel interference generated by similar
systems. Based on the results garnered from these particular experiments, which represent a small portion of the
many co-channel scenarios that can exist with IEEE 802.16 systems, it is reasonable to conclude that:
(a) The packet error rate degradation due to OFDM on OFDM co-channel interference is only slightly worse
than that predicted by the AWGN interference on OFDM.
(b) OFDM systems may display increased CCI sensitivity at low RSSI levels.
(c) The IEEE 802.16-2004 specified Preambles and FCH likely have the same CCI resiliency as shown by
the BPSK1/2 performance curves.

3
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

References

[1] A. Salvekar et al., “BPSK modulation for IEEE 802.16 WirelessMAN OFDM,” IEEE C802.16d-04/31r1,
March 2004.
[2] L. Li and O. Sarca, “FEC performance with ARQ and adaptive burst profile selection,” IEEE 802.16abc-
01/60, November 2001.

0
RSSI = -70dBm, Packet size = 256 bytes
10
BPSK 1/2
QPSK 1/2
QPSK 3/4
16QAM 1/2
16QAM 3/4
64QAM 2/3
64QAM 3/4
PER

-1
10

-2
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
CINR (dB)

Fig. 2 PER vs. CINR (packet size = 256 bytes)

4
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

0
QPSK 3/4, Packet size = 128 bytes
10
RSSI = -80 dBm
RSSI = -70 dBm
RSSI = -60 dBm
PER

-1
10

-2
10
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
CINR (dB)

Fig. 3 PER vs. CINR (packet size = 128 bytes)

5
2007-07-11 IEEE C802. 16h-07/071

QPSK 3/4, Packet size = 128 bytes, RSSI = -70 dBm

0
10
W iMAX Interference (QPSK 1/2)
AW GN
PER

-1
10

-2
10
5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5 8 8.5 9 9.5 10 10.5
CINR (dB)

Fig. 4 PER vs. CNR (AWGN case) and CINR (802.16 interference) (packet size = 128 bytes)