Performance Analysis of the WiMAX TDD Mode

The enormous growth of demand for higher bandwidth on the wireless sector rises continuously while established cell based technologies reach their capacity limits. The multimedia abilities of mobile computers or other internet compliant devices will rise in the near future and so the underlying technology has to meet the coming demands. However, which technique will succeed in providing wide range and high throughput concurrently for end users at the same time? The 802.16 standard - also known as WiMAX - has the potential of representing the next generation of wireless networks. On the one hand WiMAX can be beneficial in crowded geographical areas and on the other hand in rural areas where no wired infrastructure exists. Thereby a tradeoff between high throughput rates and high reachability can be guaranteed. The advantages of the Time Division Duplex mode of WiMAX is analysed and discussed in detail, after a basic technical overview of the WiMAX standard is presented by the author. Furthermore, different bandwidth reservation mechanisms conclude the analysis. Realistic all day scenarios of File Transfer, Voice-over-IP and e-mail traffic patterns complete this work.