Reliability Analysis of IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks

Abstract

The problem of terminal-pair reliability has been extensively studied for wired computer networks, however comparatively less research has been done on the reliability of wireless networks. With mesh networks becoming a more attractive option than the traditional point- to-multipoint network design due to extended coverage and increased overall link quality, a method is needed to evaluate the added reliability obtained through the available path diversity in fixed wireless mesh networks. Methods are available to evaluate the reliability of wired networks, however they do not take into account the outage conditions found in a wireless environment such as multipath fading and interference. This paper combines the currently available reliability algorithms for wired networks along with methods to calculate the link and node outage in a fixed station IEEE 802.16 environment in order the simulate the reliability of a mesh subscriber station's connection to the base station. An example calculation is also provided.