On the impact of hybrid errors on mobile WiMAX networks

Burst and AWGN errors affect mobile WiMAX networks because of propagation conditions generally resulting from the mobility characteristics. Mobile WiMAX networks are inherently vulnerable to transmission errors due to propagation conditions such as multipath fading, shadowing, and Doppler spectrum. To ensure reliable communications, even in adverse physical conditions, errors must be detected and corrected by the receiver device. The traditional approach to deal with this problem is the employment of forward error correction techniques along with bit interleaving during the phase called channel encoding. In this article we propose an hybrid errors model where both burst and AWGN errors are considered. Moreover, we present an error sequence generator, used to simulate and evaluate the use of forward error correction techniques and bit interleaving applied to nomadic (fixed) and mobile WiMAX systems affected by hybrid errors. Simulation results show that using a hybrid error model better reflects the realistic behavior of RF channels, than models which consider only AWGN. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.