Radio Planning and Field Trial Measurement of a Deployed 4G WiMAX Network in an Urban Sub-Saharan African Environment

Introduction

Ghana has been a pioneer in African telecommunications (Broadband penetration in Ghana, n.d.):

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  It launched the first cellular mobile network in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1992

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  It was among the first countries on the continent to be connected to the Internet and to introduce Asymmetric Digital subscriber Line broadband services

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  It led the way in market liberalization and deregulation when it privatized Ghana Telecom (GT) as early as 1996.

Since then, Ghana has become one of the continent’s most vibrant mobile markets with now six competing operators, including regional heavyweights such as MTN, Vodafone, Tigo and Airtel.

However in contrast with the enormous success in voice communication, data communication has seen little success. Internet user penetration was below 10% of the population until recently (Ghana lauded for internet penetration, n.d.), but developments are now speeding up following the introduction of wireless and 4G mobile broadband technologies such as WiMAX and Long Term Evolution (LTE). The arrival of three new international fiber links between 2010 and 2012 has ended the monopolistic pricing of international bandwidth (Ghana-Telecoms, n.d.).

In spite of the enthusiasm for broadband services in Ghana and the continent as compared to the rest of the world, Africa is seriously lagging behind in broadband penetration and that has become a source of worry for the International Telecommunications Union and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organization (Broadband penetration in Ghana, n.d.). The introduction of WiMAX comes as a great relief to most African countries since it promises to bring broadband access to the less privileged.

WiMAX promises a maximum capacity of 75Mbps (IEEE 802.16-2004, 2004) and the minimum data rates needed to support broadband applications are summarized in Table 1.