On the System-Level Analysis of Outer Loop Link Adaptation for IEEE 802.16e Systems

Link adaptation is a process of paramount importance to optimize the performance of wireless communication systems. However, standardization committees have not standardized link adaptation procedures in order to foster competitiveness among vendors. As a consequence, many research projects have been conducted on this field and several strategies have been presented and tested, mainly for High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems. For mobile WiMAX systems (IEEE 802.16e standard) the use of approaches like outer loop link adaptation (OLLA) has not been reported as much as for other system technologies. In this context, this paper aims at providing a system-level analysis of OLLA applied to mobile WiMAX systems. We use a system-level simulator in order to assess the performance of OLLA in mobile WiMAX system.