Modelling a high data-rate 802.16 wireless modem

By Thierry Saunier, THALES & Vincent Perrier, CoFluent Design
dspdesignline.com (February 12, 2009)

As part of the ITEA MARTES European research project, THALES needed to model a high data-rate 802.16 wireless modem to predict system behavior and performance though system-level modeling and simulation of partial hardware and software, perform design space exploration early in the lifecycle with embedded system executable specifications, and capitalize on the organization's co-design know-how at a higher abstract level to reduce development cost.

THALES used CoFluent Studio to model an 802.16 modem using the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation techniques to identify adaptations that improve the robustness of the links and/or the output data rate. The modem contains an existing piece of software originally written in C++. It is modular code and uses three freeware libraries and an internal matrix library.

The wireless local area network (WLAN) is a network standard that allows the creation of local wireless networks using free radio frequencies in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum. With a range of few hundred meters, most WLANs are based on the popular 802.11 standard.

Wireless metropolitan area networks (WMAN) of 10 km range are based on the 802.16 standard which addresses frequencies below 11 GHz (non-directional environment, several antennas on large periphery) and on the 802.16a standard for frequencies up to 10 GHz (directional environment). WMAN could potentially compete with 802.11-based solutions in low mobility.

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