Before starting writing my conclusion, I need to show my frustrated mood at this moment. When I was still reading a lot of materials and information about my topic WiMAX, when I was still expecting to finish my blog with full of a lot of knowledge in this area, when I was thinking what is the grade I may obtain in this course, just one email shaked me today. From the email I was noticed that I already got the grade for this course and the appraisal date is 9th July which means two weeks ago, the blog had been evaluated when I only finished 30-40% of my work. It was too surprise for me because without any sign, I failed the course. Then I tried to review and recheck what's wrong, I asked my friend who also took this course and the result was that the maybe I missed the deadline. Deadline? I am keeping asking myself why I don't know there is a deadline for this course, even the deadline itself. And by now, I still don't know why I don't know. Maybe I have not been informed? Or I did not notice the professor said something about the deadline? Whatever, I must ask myself why I didn't make sure the deadline issue. This may be my mistake, a unforgettable and funny mistake. There is no if after things happen, but I still want to suppose that if I know the deadline, I will, of course, keep it in mind and finish it ontime, or maybe discuss with teacher to extend it for a few weeks. But I did nothing. Is it a joke to me which make me fail on the last course like this and actually I never failed before? Hopefully it's not. The only thing I can do currently is to discuss with the professor and try to explan what happen. I hope he can understand me, I hope! Because I think I will eventually touch the sky one day. Anyway, in such a upset situation, I am holdding my tear to complete the conclusion finally.
Unlike the great situation for WiMAX in the past years, WiMAX in the year 2008 goes not well. Especially in developed countries, some important companies such as Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, Intel, Nokia slower their development in WiMAX. Considering many other competing technology and standard including HSPA, HiperMAN, LTE, etc., in the near future, WiMAX has to face more challenges in the crucial and cruel competition in wireless field. The worldwide trend of WiMAX is complicated, as I mentioned before, different regions and countries shows different situations and also even in the same countries, the situations will keep changing through time dimension. Prediction is possible but not accurate.
Despite the unclear future, WiMAX still has a large number of technology and market advantages. In fact, a successful Broadband Wireless Access business will depend on a stable and comprehensive ecosystem. The three key elements to building the WiMAX ecosystem are good standards, widely available devices and cross-industry cooperation. Standardization is essential to enable the widespread adoption of any technology. It was true for WiFi and it will be true for WiMAX. While the IEEE has been producing the standards, theWiMAX Forum is encouraging wide spread take up of WiMAX byestablishing and promoting the WiMAX certification profiles. The Forum undertakes network architecture and related profile definitions, testing and certification of products against profiles and standards to ensure interoperability of equipment from different vendors. Mobile WiMAX supports true mobility and with low cost in products. The next consideration is achieving widespread availability of interoperable devices that will evolve to meet the differing and growing needs of consumers and business users. The evolution of Mobile WiMAX and the availability of handheld WiMAX devices will drive the market to more advanced applications using voice, multimedia and data for both consumers and businesses. Thirdly, A wide selection of organizations have been involved with WiMAX for several years and the level of cooperation has been as good as that seen during the development of other wireless ecosystems. Cooperative partnerships have been formed to advance the development of crucial elements of the ecosystem. The expertise needed to evolve the ecosystem is already well developed and in place. Cooperation extends across the industry, involving major groups that are investing in the development of chipsets, devices and other fundamental components, to smaller players providing the basic building blocks such as antennas and other infrastructure components. This deeply vested interest shows that WiMAX has the coordinated backing of the industry to ensure success.
The advantages which have been discussed before shows that WiMAX is a good technology to be the next generation wireless standard. Even in ecosystem degree, it is also acceptable and advanced. However, there are still many problems for WiMAX to face including property right problem, frequency problem, and also it's hard to compete against other mature technology using in developed countries, especially in 4G market competition. Compare with GSM, UMTS or HSPA network, it's still far away for WiMAX to replace or compete against them which are the traditional leader in wireless access network. It's a good option for WiMAX to change its target to small market and transition market such as developing countries markets because at this moment, WiMAX has large advantage in those countries. That's why many developing countries have steady increasing trend. In total, no one knows how far WiMAX can reach, but I truly believe that WiMAX will have its stable market in the future, at least in Asia, while the road will be not that easy.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
4.3 WiMAX Development Prospect in Asia (Great China)
China Mainland
The situation of WiMAX in China Mainland is also complicated. Actually, in China, TD-SCDMA is the main developing technology and standard, after long time research and test, TD-SCDMA is a sophisticated and suitable for China market. If WiMAX want to develop in China, it has to face the competition from TD-SCDMA which is a self-developed technique.
During the WiMAX Forum Asia in this April, ZTE of China mentioned that with the improvement and development of mobile broadband network, people will have more fantastic experiences including radio monitoring, VoIP service and so on. And they would like to use WiMAX technology to support these service. In 2006, WiMAX chip was already embedded in the laptop to realize the protability. Considering its low cost and high compatibility, WiMAX will become a powerful and strong standard in China in market to satisfiy the requirement of customers because customers do not need to wait for the real 3G, 4G service.
Actually in 2007, according to serveral sources, the Beijing Olympic Committee had authorised China Mobile to provide WiMAX sevices during the Olympic Games in 2008. It was a really contested issue at that time and it also showed that WiMAX seemed have great prospect in China. And China Netcom will have the right to supply only WiFi services even it also want to have the right to provide WiMAX services. After that, many news said WiMAX will be given up by Beijing Olympic Committee, but now, most wireless network had been set up. The wireless broadband MAN basically is combined by WiFi Mesh+ and WiMAX technology.
A lot of cities in China are preparing to establish the wireless metropolitan access network such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing. Most of them would like to choose WiMAX combing TD-SCDMA. This is a acceptable and useful way because both technologies are similar to each other in some degrees such as they use TDD, etc. However, the coexistence of WiMAX and TD-SCDMA in China is because of the Beijing Olympic Game. No one knows after Beijing Olympic, what is going to happen about WiMAX and TD-SCDMA. My view is that these major standards in China will continue to compete with each other and try to occupy as large market as possible. If we look at the frequency problem in China, it's most probable to use 3.5GHz for WiMAX, but the government still did not announce this issue which made the operators and companies stopping in the development of WiMAX.
So in China Mainland, ostensibly, it seems that WiMAX will be boost rapidly, however, in depth, it's still need to wait for the opportunity maybe after 2008.
Taiwan
Taiwan is also a large market for wireless network. Actually, Taiwan always want to be a leading role in the matters of adopting and boosting WiMAX in the world. To be frank, Taiwan is famous for its information technology and it owns largely to state sponsored incentives and related ICT product manufaturing capability. Taiwan is considered as the top semiconductor and other ICT manufacture. In WiFi issue, it has more than 90% of world market share. M-Taiwan (Mobile Taiwan) program means Taiwan will focus on WiMAX acceleration and development. According to its advantage on chip manufacturing, it is more obvious for them to decrease the cost on WiMAX. This ecosystem is suitable for Taiwan to develop WiMAX for market spreading. Taiwan is moving steadfastly with its plan of WiMAX spectrum and sticking to its original plan to issue a number of regional licenses. This will allow green-field operators to participate in the M-Taiwan program to join the ranks of established operators in providing WiMAX services. Several large scale WiMAX networks are expected to be created these two years, making it easier for these networks to provide commercial services in the near future. Additonally, the government is takeing innovative WiMAX deployment approaches into account to create wireless cities and put in use in High Speed Railway system. The M-Taiwan Program will be positive for some other countries and areas who may want to realize or adopt WiMAX standard.
Mr. Jen-tang Wang, the CEO of Acer, is persistanting to support and popularize WiMAX technology in Taiwan. His idea is to combine WiMAX technology, equipment, network system, operators, market together to accelerate the development of WiMAX in Taiwan so that Taiwan can become the leader of WiMAX all around the world. He also said there existing a lot of problems in the market, Taiwan is possible to use its advantage in hardware manufacture to drive the progress of WiMAX. He advised Taiwan need to cooperate with international company such as Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, Intel, etc. to solve many technological problems. In total, Taiwan concerns WiMAX very much and WiMAX will have wonderful prospect in Taiwan.
Practically, different countries have different situation and attitude for WiMAX, but overall, WiMAX will continue its steady development in Asian countries.
The situation of WiMAX in China Mainland is also complicated. Actually, in China, TD-SCDMA is the main developing technology and standard, after long time research and test, TD-SCDMA is a sophisticated and suitable for China market. If WiMAX want to develop in China, it has to face the competition from TD-SCDMA which is a self-developed technique.
During the WiMAX Forum Asia in this April, ZTE of China mentioned that with the improvement and development of mobile broadband network, people will have more fantastic experiences including radio monitoring, VoIP service and so on. And they would like to use WiMAX technology to support these service. In 2006, WiMAX chip was already embedded in the laptop to realize the protability. Considering its low cost and high compatibility, WiMAX will become a powerful and strong standard in China in market to satisfiy the requirement of customers because customers do not need to wait for the real 3G, 4G service.
Actually in 2007, according to serveral sources, the Beijing Olympic Committee had authorised China Mobile to provide WiMAX sevices during the Olympic Games in 2008. It was a really contested issue at that time and it also showed that WiMAX seemed have great prospect in China. And China Netcom will have the right to supply only WiFi services even it also want to have the right to provide WiMAX services. After that, many news said WiMAX will be given up by Beijing Olympic Committee, but now, most wireless network had been set up. The wireless broadband MAN basically is combined by WiFi Mesh+ and WiMAX technology.
A lot of cities in China are preparing to establish the wireless metropolitan access network such as Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing. Most of them would like to choose WiMAX combing TD-SCDMA. This is a acceptable and useful way because both technologies are similar to each other in some degrees such as they use TDD, etc. However, the coexistence of WiMAX and TD-SCDMA in China is because of the Beijing Olympic Game. No one knows after Beijing Olympic, what is going to happen about WiMAX and TD-SCDMA. My view is that these major standards in China will continue to compete with each other and try to occupy as large market as possible. If we look at the frequency problem in China, it's most probable to use 3.5GHz for WiMAX, but the government still did not announce this issue which made the operators and companies stopping in the development of WiMAX.
So in China Mainland, ostensibly, it seems that WiMAX will be boost rapidly, however, in depth, it's still need to wait for the opportunity maybe after 2008.
Taiwan
Taiwan is also a large market for wireless network. Actually, Taiwan always want to be a leading role in the matters of adopting and boosting WiMAX in the world. To be frank, Taiwan is famous for its information technology and it owns largely to state sponsored incentives and related ICT product manufaturing capability. Taiwan is considered as the top semiconductor and other ICT manufacture. In WiFi issue, it has more than 90% of world market share. M-Taiwan (Mobile Taiwan) program means Taiwan will focus on WiMAX acceleration and development. According to its advantage on chip manufacturing, it is more obvious for them to decrease the cost on WiMAX. This ecosystem is suitable for Taiwan to develop WiMAX for market spreading. Taiwan is moving steadfastly with its plan of WiMAX spectrum and sticking to its original plan to issue a number of regional licenses. This will allow green-field operators to participate in the M-Taiwan program to join the ranks of established operators in providing WiMAX services. Several large scale WiMAX networks are expected to be created these two years, making it easier for these networks to provide commercial services in the near future. Additonally, the government is takeing innovative WiMAX deployment approaches into account to create wireless cities and put in use in High Speed Railway system. The M-Taiwan Program will be positive for some other countries and areas who may want to realize or adopt WiMAX standard.
Mr. Jen-tang Wang, the CEO of Acer, is persistanting to support and popularize WiMAX technology in Taiwan. His idea is to combine WiMAX technology, equipment, network system, operators, market together to accelerate the development of WiMAX in Taiwan so that Taiwan can become the leader of WiMAX all around the world. He also said there existing a lot of problems in the market, Taiwan is possible to use its advantage in hardware manufacture to drive the progress of WiMAX. He advised Taiwan need to cooperate with international company such as Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, Intel, etc. to solve many technological problems. In total, Taiwan concerns WiMAX very much and WiMAX will have wonderful prospect in Taiwan.
Practically, different countries have different situation and attitude for WiMAX, but overall, WiMAX will continue its steady development in Asian countries.
4.3 WiMAX Development Prospect in Asia (Japan, India, South Korea, etc.)
Asia (Japan, India, South Korea, etc.)
In Asia, WiMAX is a very hot topic and it seems to be a good prospect in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. This part I will focus on Japan, India, South Korea and the situation of China and Taiwan will be given in the next section.
Actually, India and Japan will become the largest WiMAX market in the region according to a report from Spring board Research. The report The report forecasts Wimax service revenues in Asia Pacific to reach $5.5 billion and nearly 34 million users by 2012. The report, titled “Laying the Foundation: Wimax in Asia/Pacific 2008”, further estimated the number of Wimax subscribers to grow from 230,000 in 2007 to 33.9 million by 2012. Mobile Wimax services are estimated to garner a significant majority of revenues and subscribers compared to fixed Wimax services. India and Japan will be the largest markets for Wimax in the region, accounting for more than half of the market, followed by Pakistan and China. The next couple of years will be critical for Wimax growth in Asia Pacific, and during that time, we are expecting services to be available for end users in over 10 countries,” said Bryan Wang, Springboard research director for connectivity research. “The majority of Wimax subscribers will be from Korea, Pakistan, India, and Australia,” Wang added.
Cantab Wireless also said in its report, WiMAX technology may not be successful in mature market of developed countries, but in developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, WiMAX will be a strong success. Especially in Inida or Parkistan, there are not other large mobile broadband service as the competitor so it gives WiMAX enough space to grow up! They even forecase that in 2013, WiMAX will become the main wireless access service in India. Even in middle East, WiMAX also will be with high development prospect which is the similar situation like south america.
In South Korea, WiBro already becoming the main service in their market. Actually, as we know, WiBro is based on 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX, it is just a different name of WiMAX. The country's WiBro service is preparing for a boost in performance later this year that is expected to keep the service at the leading edge of mobile broadband. Korea's WiBro service is the only market to have WiMAX Forum Certified products based on 802.16e-2005 Wave 1 requirements. And they are developing Wave 2 by Korea Telecom (KT) and the Wave 2 network is expected to start commercial operation during July while SK Telecom is targeting September. Current WiBro users should continue to receive the same services without interruption, though a next-generation WiBro device would be necessary to obtain improved network performance. So in South Korea, they have correspondingly mature market and service comparing to other country. And WiBro will continue its development and boost in South Korea in long time.
Therefore, we can know that many asian countries are considering WiMAX as their primary future in wireless access service and technology. Of course this will accelerate the pace of WiMAX in Asia even around the world.
In Asia, WiMAX is a very hot topic and it seems to be a good prospect in China, India, South Korea, Taiwan, etc. This part I will focus on Japan, India, South Korea and the situation of China and Taiwan will be given in the next section.
Actually, India and Japan will become the largest WiMAX market in the region according to a report from Spring board Research. The report The report forecasts Wimax service revenues in Asia Pacific to reach $5.5 billion and nearly 34 million users by 2012. The report, titled “Laying the Foundation: Wimax in Asia/Pacific 2008”, further estimated the number of Wimax subscribers to grow from 230,000 in 2007 to 33.9 million by 2012. Mobile Wimax services are estimated to garner a significant majority of revenues and subscribers compared to fixed Wimax services. India and Japan will be the largest markets for Wimax in the region, accounting for more than half of the market, followed by Pakistan and China. The next couple of years will be critical for Wimax growth in Asia Pacific, and during that time, we are expecting services to be available for end users in over 10 countries,” said Bryan Wang, Springboard research director for connectivity research. “The majority of Wimax subscribers will be from Korea, Pakistan, India, and Australia,” Wang added.
Cantab Wireless also said in its report, WiMAX technology may not be successful in mature market of developed countries, but in developing countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, WiMAX will be a strong success. Especially in Inida or Parkistan, there are not other large mobile broadband service as the competitor so it gives WiMAX enough space to grow up! They even forecase that in 2013, WiMAX will become the main wireless access service in India. Even in middle East, WiMAX also will be with high development prospect which is the similar situation like south america.
In South Korea, WiBro already becoming the main service in their market. Actually, as we know, WiBro is based on 802.16e-2005 mobile WiMAX, it is just a different name of WiMAX. The country's WiBro service is preparing for a boost in performance later this year that is expected to keep the service at the leading edge of mobile broadband. Korea's WiBro service is the only market to have WiMAX Forum Certified products based on 802.16e-2005 Wave 1 requirements. And they are developing Wave 2 by Korea Telecom (KT) and the Wave 2 network is expected to start commercial operation during July while SK Telecom is targeting September. Current WiBro users should continue to receive the same services without interruption, though a next-generation WiBro device would be necessary to obtain improved network performance. So in South Korea, they have correspondingly mature market and service comparing to other country. And WiBro will continue its development and boost in South Korea in long time.
Therefore, we can know that many asian countries are considering WiMAX as their primary future in wireless access service and technology. Of course this will accelerate the pace of WiMAX in Asia even around the world.
4.2 WiMAX Development Prospect in America
United States
The development of WiMAX in the US is more critical. The prospect of WiMAX in US is not clear and obvious because some activities of code companies in 2008.
Actually, before 2008, a lot of organizations in US had confidence to focus on WiMAX service, commercial WiMAX service already available in US. But in 2008, the situation change suddenly, now in the competition of 4G broadband wireless, WiMAX is not anymore the best solution for many industries while the last year, a lot of companies seem WiMAX as the most promising standard in the future, including Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Sprint Nextel, etc. They even aimed at increasing the speed of network and decresing down the price. What they considered was that WiMAX is a standardized wireless technology with low cost so that they were possible to integral it into meda player, car, handset and other equipments. However, things always change fast, the future of WiMAX has to be worried about. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire broke away with each other and LTE (Long Term Evolution) comes up and will be support by many big companies. Then many people think WiMAX is not a mature standard and will be replaced by LTE. From the news, we can also look at that Nortel Networks will reduce the investment on WiMAX and change its way to concentrate on developing LTE. The benefit is that because of Verizon support LTE, so that North Network received a mass of order from Verizon which made it profitable. Besides, AT&T and other operators in Europe also chose LTE technology. They recognized that LTE will be with low rist compare with WiMAX as 4G technique. Moreover, there is news about that Intel may quit WiMAX and accept LTE. This news shocked a lot of experts who are supporting WiMAX. But this indicates that LTE will become the biggest competitor in next generation technoloy in US.
Neverthe less, the prospect of WiMAX is not as bad as we see. Actually, TDS Telecom started data and voices service in Madison even its broadband setup is fixed. Sprint Nextel made employee service in company area in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington and they were also preparing for the future business. The important company Clearwire may have there WiMAX service formally in the late of 2008, they already started their preparation on network trial in Portland. More and more customer selected WiMAX as their home network service instead of others. It makes sense because technologically, WiMAX has its own advantages as I mentioned in previous sections, especially with the high speed and low cost, and advanced application support. But there is still have one thing we need to consider is the low cost advantage of WiMAX. The cost depends on the price of chips while the price of chips are always unstable. As the not very mature market for WiMAX, so the future cost of it is still unclear. So that how to keep the low price of WiMAX is the considerable problem. In US, a few anti-WiMAX people think that WiMAX is just a temporary technology. The main reason they have this opinion maybe because Verizon uses LTE for 4G service instead of CDMA2000, as we know, LTE is the in the approach of GSM network. Actually, Qualcomm also have its LTE chips. WiMAX may be frustrated about Verizon's policy but its not difficult to understand why they choose LTE because Verizon has close contact with Vodafone in Europe.
So in the US, WiMAX's future is not clear by now, and there is still a long way to go because of the main competitor LTE. Sprint, Nextel and Clearwire will play an important role during the development of WiMAX in North America. Without doubt, the challenge is also the opportunity for WiMAX.
South America
In south America, this situation is a bit different. Alvarison is the main company in this region who support the development of WiMAX. In Brazil, Agentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, a big WiMAX network is establishing and the users coverage is much larger than that in US and Europe. The forecast is that customers of WiMAX will keep increasing in the future, it's extremly better than North America. But in my opinion, what I worry about is that the market of WiMAX may be affected by the situation of North America. If WiMAX fail in US, then it will be indeed a negative effec to its development in Latin America.
The development of WiMAX in the US is more critical. The prospect of WiMAX in US is not clear and obvious because some activities of code companies in 2008.
Actually, before 2008, a lot of organizations in US had confidence to focus on WiMAX service, commercial WiMAX service already available in US. But in 2008, the situation change suddenly, now in the competition of 4G broadband wireless, WiMAX is not anymore the best solution for many industries while the last year, a lot of companies seem WiMAX as the most promising standard in the future, including Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Sprint Nextel, etc. They even aimed at increasing the speed of network and decresing down the price. What they considered was that WiMAX is a standardized wireless technology with low cost so that they were possible to integral it into meda player, car, handset and other equipments. However, things always change fast, the future of WiMAX has to be worried about. Sprint Nextel and Clearwire broke away with each other and LTE (Long Term Evolution) comes up and will be support by many big companies. Then many people think WiMAX is not a mature standard and will be replaced by LTE. From the news, we can also look at that Nortel Networks will reduce the investment on WiMAX and change its way to concentrate on developing LTE. The benefit is that because of Verizon support LTE, so that North Network received a mass of order from Verizon which made it profitable. Besides, AT&T and other operators in Europe also chose LTE technology. They recognized that LTE will be with low rist compare with WiMAX as 4G technique. Moreover, there is news about that Intel may quit WiMAX and accept LTE. This news shocked a lot of experts who are supporting WiMAX. But this indicates that LTE will become the biggest competitor in next generation technoloy in US.
Neverthe less, the prospect of WiMAX is not as bad as we see. Actually, TDS Telecom started data and voices service in Madison even its broadband setup is fixed. Sprint Nextel made employee service in company area in Chicago, Baltimore and Washington and they were also preparing for the future business. The important company Clearwire may have there WiMAX service formally in the late of 2008, they already started their preparation on network trial in Portland. More and more customer selected WiMAX as their home network service instead of others. It makes sense because technologically, WiMAX has its own advantages as I mentioned in previous sections, especially with the high speed and low cost, and advanced application support. But there is still have one thing we need to consider is the low cost advantage of WiMAX. The cost depends on the price of chips while the price of chips are always unstable. As the not very mature market for WiMAX, so the future cost of it is still unclear. So that how to keep the low price of WiMAX is the considerable problem. In US, a few anti-WiMAX people think that WiMAX is just a temporary technology. The main reason they have this opinion maybe because Verizon uses LTE for 4G service instead of CDMA2000, as we know, LTE is the in the approach of GSM network. Actually, Qualcomm also have its LTE chips. WiMAX may be frustrated about Verizon's policy but its not difficult to understand why they choose LTE because Verizon has close contact with Vodafone in Europe.
So in the US, WiMAX's future is not clear by now, and there is still a long way to go because of the main competitor LTE. Sprint, Nextel and Clearwire will play an important role during the development of WiMAX in North America. Without doubt, the challenge is also the opportunity for WiMAX.
South America
In south America, this situation is a bit different. Alvarison is the main company in this region who support the development of WiMAX. In Brazil, Agentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, a big WiMAX network is establishing and the users coverage is much larger than that in US and Europe. The forecast is that customers of WiMAX will keep increasing in the future, it's extremly better than North America. But in my opinion, what I worry about is that the market of WiMAX may be affected by the situation of North America. If WiMAX fail in US, then it will be indeed a negative effec to its development in Latin America.
Monday, July 21, 2008
4.1 WiMAX Development Prospect in Europe
As mentioned in previous section, a lot of countries was or is starting to apply WiMAX standard as the main wireless fixed or portable communication access technology. But some discommenders still believe WiMAX is only the transition technology and will be replaced by other technologies which seem more promising. Focus on this problem, I would like to give the development prospect of different area including Europe, America and Asia.
EUROPE
In some western European countries, HSPA is considered as the continuing technology of UMTS naturally and the preference of mobile broadband technology due to it’s not necessary to open new frequency bands. Also, many people are thinking that WiMAX is impossible to occupy a large market in Europe which is the main area using GSM. However, it’s not neglectable that WiMAX already spread through Europe and more and more operators are interested in WiMAX because its technological benefits. The major problem may be the historical reason so that operators could not only concentrate on WiMAX setup. One prediction is that the portable handset which is compatible to WiMAX and HSDPA will be put on the market, and this may become the milestone of WiMAX. Actually, Juniper Research is very confident for the development in Europe of WiMAX because it has been accepted as IMT2000 by ITU (International Telecommunication Union).
The fact is that WiMAX start to preparing for the thriving even though 3G and HSDPA go ahead than WIMAX. Especially after the release of IEEE 802.16e, WiMAX seems already well-prepared for the high development around Europe. Particularly in some regions of Germany, the ground layer establishment for business services almost finished and it started to offer services for individual users from January 2008. VSE NET GmbH, a regional telecommunication system company in Saarland state, southeastern of Germany, started the first mobile-WiMAX service in Europe from January 2008 as well. This company has cooperation with Alcatel-Lucent on the issue of WiMAX and planed to setting mobile base station setup which will be used to high-speed network, IP or other communication service based on WiMAX. Moreover, they use 3.5GHz bands and this frequency band is different from which was using in South Korea, US, and Japan, at 2.3-2.6GHz. Office of Communication (Ofcom) announced that UK Broadband was permitted to use frequency bands 3.5GHz to mobile service. That means they were possible to use the handsets or equipments which are compatible to the 802.16e. British Telecom is planning to install six WiMAX antennas and associated equipment on the tallest building in Newcastle on Tyne and some other locations. Altitude Telecom in France deployed WiMAX licensed 3.5GHz and apply products "4Motion" with Alvarion. In the Netherlands, Worldmax announced WiMAX network was used commercially in Amsterdam this June. The frequency band is 3.5GHz instead of 2.6GHz band. Worldmax is an investment corporation founded by Intel and an operator. Worldmax is intending to compete against KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile in this area. They estimate that mobile WiMAX laptop can access internet without bit limit which may cost 20 EUR per month. Normally, 3.5GHz is the wireless access band while 2.6GHz is considered as mobile communication band. This announcement is tremendously positive for the market development of WiMAX in the Netherlands and Europe.
On the contrary, the vendue of 2.6GHz band in UK has been delayed (the original schedule is August 2008) by related department due to the legal challenges of T-Mobile and O2. As we know, the market of UK is a key step for the process of WiMAX in Europe. Therefore, a lot of technical experts think that WiMAX will have long way to follow in Europe.
For me, despite both good news and bad news happened, I still believe WiMAX will have good prospect in Europe. The positive side are those after a few years’ exploration, WiMAX keep it on 3.5GHz as wireless access; WiMAX became one of the legal technologies in Third Generation. Negatively, some companies do not have income directly to deploy WiMAX which means there is not enough cash flow to support the WiMAX development so that many companies are care about deploying WiMAX. In total, the progress in Europe will be an important step for the development of WiMAX all around the world. And this may depend on the situation eventually in some developed countries such as Germany, UK, etc.
EUROPE
In some western European countries, HSPA is considered as the continuing technology of UMTS naturally and the preference of mobile broadband technology due to it’s not necessary to open new frequency bands. Also, many people are thinking that WiMAX is impossible to occupy a large market in Europe which is the main area using GSM. However, it’s not neglectable that WiMAX already spread through Europe and more and more operators are interested in WiMAX because its technological benefits. The major problem may be the historical reason so that operators could not only concentrate on WiMAX setup. One prediction is that the portable handset which is compatible to WiMAX and HSDPA will be put on the market, and this may become the milestone of WiMAX. Actually, Juniper Research is very confident for the development in Europe of WiMAX because it has been accepted as IMT2000 by ITU (International Telecommunication Union).
The fact is that WiMAX start to preparing for the thriving even though 3G and HSDPA go ahead than WIMAX. Especially after the release of IEEE 802.16e, WiMAX seems already well-prepared for the high development around Europe. Particularly in some regions of Germany, the ground layer establishment for business services almost finished and it started to offer services for individual users from January 2008. VSE NET GmbH, a regional telecommunication system company in Saarland state, southeastern of Germany, started the first mobile-WiMAX service in Europe from January 2008 as well. This company has cooperation with Alcatel-Lucent on the issue of WiMAX and planed to setting mobile base station setup which will be used to high-speed network, IP or other communication service based on WiMAX. Moreover, they use 3.5GHz bands and this frequency band is different from which was using in South Korea, US, and Japan, at 2.3-2.6GHz. Office of Communication (Ofcom) announced that UK Broadband was permitted to use frequency bands 3.5GHz to mobile service. That means they were possible to use the handsets or equipments which are compatible to the 802.16e. British Telecom is planning to install six WiMAX antennas and associated equipment on the tallest building in Newcastle on Tyne and some other locations. Altitude Telecom in France deployed WiMAX licensed 3.5GHz and apply products "4Motion" with Alvarion. In the Netherlands, Worldmax announced WiMAX network was used commercially in Amsterdam this June. The frequency band is 3.5GHz instead of 2.6GHz band. Worldmax is an investment corporation founded by Intel and an operator. Worldmax is intending to compete against KPN, Vodafone and T-Mobile in this area. They estimate that mobile WiMAX laptop can access internet without bit limit which may cost 20 EUR per month. Normally, 3.5GHz is the wireless access band while 2.6GHz is considered as mobile communication band. This announcement is tremendously positive for the market development of WiMAX in the Netherlands and Europe.
On the contrary, the vendue of 2.6GHz band in UK has been delayed (the original schedule is August 2008) by related department due to the legal challenges of T-Mobile and O2. As we know, the market of UK is a key step for the process of WiMAX in Europe. Therefore, a lot of technical experts think that WiMAX will have long way to follow in Europe.
For me, despite both good news and bad news happened, I still believe WiMAX will have good prospect in Europe. The positive side are those after a few years’ exploration, WiMAX keep it on 3.5GHz as wireless access; WiMAX became one of the legal technologies in Third Generation. Negatively, some companies do not have income directly to deploy WiMAX which means there is not enough cash flow to support the WiMAX development so that many companies are care about deploying WiMAX. In total, the progress in Europe will be an important step for the development of WiMAX all around the world. And this may depend on the situation eventually in some developed countries such as Germany, UK, etc.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
3.5 Organization list of deployed WiMAX
All around the world, a mass of organizations or corporations deployed WiMAX standard as there application to cater for the wireless network access requirement and technology. Here I list the organizations as continents classification simply. The information mainly comes from Wikipedia [1].
Europe:
Austria - WiMAX Telecom holds 3.5 GHz licences for the entire country.
Belgium - Clearwire covers mainly Brussels.
Bulgaria - Max Telecom Ltd. and Trans Telecom holds a class A license in the 3.5 GHz band (2x21 MHz) and has deployed nation-wide network moving towards mobile WiMAX technology; Nexcom Bulgaria, Mtel and Carrier BG hold class B licenses.
Crotia - Divide into twenty counties and capital Zagreb, and 4 frequency blocks every county; VIPnet and OiV hold 3.5 GHz licences for the capital Zagreb.
Denmark - A few companies are using WiMAX with differen frequencies depite of government reluctance to allow private companies to use WiMAX frequency ranges. The largest cities are covered by Clearwire.
Estonia - A total of 4 licenses in the 3.5 - 3.6 GHz range has been issued to five companies. Norby Telecom, Baltic Broadband and Tele2 have national-wide licenses and Levira. Elion share the same frequency.
Finland - Fifteen WiMAX operators in Finland spread throughout the country. SuomiCom has partial coverage in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
France - Iliad is currently the only owner of a national level license which is the owner of the French ISP; Altitude Telecom deployed WiMAX in rural areas of France; Any-Port uses unlicensed 2.4 and 5.4 GHz bands to provide wireless broadband to the yachting community on the French, Italian and Spanish Rivieras.
Germany - Deutsche Breitband Dienste (DBD), start its commercial WiMAX operation in Berlin in Nov. 2005 under its brand MAXXonair using WiMAX from airspan networks. Several networks in some other cities were deployed till now. It uses 3.5 GHz WLL licenses with WiMAX technology. Clearwire, Inquam and DBD now hold licenses for the entire country.
Greece - OTE has a pilot WiMAX network in operation in Mount Athos and is planning nationside deployment.
Ireland - National University of Ireland, Maynooth Public Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) Network in July 2008; then the Intel Ireland WiMAX Trials.
Italy - Italian Ministry of Defense currently holds the 3.5 GHz band, and is about to free the band through auctions in order to let the Government sell licences. All licenses available were awarded to different operators in an auction ended on February 2008.
Malta - There are three licences in 3.5 GHz band awarded by the Malta Communications Authority to Vodafone, Go Mobile, Cellcom in Oct 2005. Only Vodafone has commercially launched a broadband and VOIP service over WiMax in July 2007.
Netherlands - Worldmax has announced it will deployed mobile WiMAX in the 3.5GHz band.
Poland - Neta network in about 50 cities; NASK in 5 cities; and so on.
Russia - Russian leader of wireless broadband Enforta operates the network in 35 largest capitals of Russia with total popular 50M, uses Alvarion and InfiNet Wireless equipment for its WiMAX network; Mirkin Group aims to provide Free WiMAX connection for individual use. Summa Telecom currently holds national 2.5-2.7GHz license; Synterra WiMAX uses equipment from Nextnet Wireless for its WiMAX network in Moscow region.
Slovakia - WiMAX Telecom holds 3.5 GHz license.
Slovenia - APEK has issued two WiMAX licences on Oct. 2006: Telekom Slovenije connected first WiMAX broadband user on March, 2007; Tok telekomunikacije sold to the American company Winvest Inc. .
Sweden - Telia Sonera has installed WiMAX in 21 counties.
UK - Wi-Manx isle of Man based service provider, holds a 3.6-3.8 GHz licence and was the first to launch a commercial licensed WiMAX service in the UK; FREEDOM4 holds 3.6 GHz licensed spectrum and is deploying WiMAX throughout the UK; UK Broadband a subsidiary of PCCW, owns 3.5 GHz licences; BT is planning to install six WiMAX antennas and associated equipment on the tallest building in Newcastle on Tyne; Metranet, Brighton provide connectivity to Brighton and Hovn City Council and the University of Sussex amongst others; Nomad Digital and T-Mobile have implemented a trackside WiMAX network on the London to Brighton railway line.
Ukraine - Ukrainian High Technologies Ltd. holds the license for 3.4-3.7 GHz range and currently operates WiMAX networks in Kiev and Kharkiv based on Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 client terminals.
America
Bolivia - Telecel S.A holds a lilcence in the 3.5 GHz band and deployed a WiMAX network in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 2007 for internet broadband services.
Brazil - A few Brazilian companies already have rights to important parts of the WiMAX spectrum, both at 2.5 GHz (MMDS band) and 3.5 GHz. Brazilian Agency of Telecommunications to sell licences for WiMAX.
Canada - MetroBridge Networks serves businesses in British Columbia with connections up to 3 Mbit/s with >7500 km² of coverage area; Sogetel offer WiMAX connection for Nicolet- Yamaska and St-Hyacinthe (MRC Maskoutain) in Quebec; Primus Canada and Mipps Inc. are jointly conducting WiMAX IEEE 802.16e-2005 (3.5 GHz) trials in Hamilton, Ontario, using Alcatel-Lucent's new WiMAX equipment; MDS Wireless owns and operates one of the largest WiMax networks in Southern Ontario providing internet services to residential and business users.
Colombia - Orbitel launched in Cali the first WiMAX network of Colombia in July 2006; Colombian company Telecom launched a PRE-WiMAX network in Bucaramanga. Orbitel, ETB and Telecom hold 3.5 GHz licences for the entire country in January 20 2006; In November 23, 2006 Cable Union de Occidente, Avantel and others won licences to operate WiMax in several regions of Colombia.
Costa Rica - Radiografica Costarricense S.A. started offering the service on the second week of 2008; QTEL Costa Rica has deployed a national long-haul backbone throughout the entire country.
Mexico - Axtel commercizlized WiMAX for Monterrey city in Oct. 2005; Ultranet2go provides WiMAX services in four states.
Panama - WIPET is the first Company to deploy a WiMax network in Panama beginning in January of 2008 and covering Panama City and Coronado Beach.
Paraguay - Tigo Banda Ancha is currently using a WiMAX network; Hipuu / Nucleo was the first to deploy a WiMax network in Paraguay. They use RedMAX from Redline Communications.
Peru - Telmex x-plor is currently using a WiMAX network offering voice and data services in many cities.
USA - DigitalBridge Communications launched the first commercially available WiMAX network in the United States in 2007 under the name BridgeMAXX and holds 2.5 GHz licenses in several regions; Nth Air holds a nationwide 3.65 GHz license. Sprint Nextel holds licences in the 2.5 GHz band covering most of the U.S. Sprint plans to build a "Nationwide advanced wireless broadband network expected to cover 100 million people in 2008." Clearwire holds 2.5 GHz licences in several regions, and is running a test market in the Northwestern United States in preparation to deploy a nationwide network to rival the other nationwide carriers. In May 2008, Sprint Nextel announced a plan to merge their WiMax operation under the Clearwire name, with additional
investment from five other technology companies. NextWave Wireless holds licences in the 1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz band. Xanadoo operates Navini Networks-based pre-WiMax networks in the 2.5 GHz spectrum in 6 markets in the midwest. Open Range Communications will build a 17-state WiMAX network providing wireless broadband to 500+ un-served and underserved rural American communities. Conterra, RazzoLink and Quad-Cities Online in some other cities also use WiMAX based network.
Venezuela - Movilmax has deployed Wimax to the IEEE 802.16e standard in Caracas and is the first which operates in 2.5 GHz.
Asia Pacific
Australia - Unwired holds licences in the 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands, and has plans to build a mobile WiMax network on the 2.3 GHz band once WiMax-Forum-certified hardware is available. This will be a replacement to its proprietary fixed wireless system which uses the 3.5 GHz band. Austar holds licences in the 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands; The services provider more recently ran an extensive trial of a standard mobile WiMAX solution provided by Nortel. Digital River Networks are further deploying fixed WiMAX network in areas of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria with extensive field trials operating in the suburbs of Melbourne; The company has existing wireless network platforms in 34 regional areas of Australia which will be converted to Wi-Max before June 2009.
Bahrain - Zain Covers the Kingdom of Bahrain and has used WiMAX for High Speed Internet under the product Zain@Home.
China - Spectrum is the impediment to deployments in China. However some progress has been made but deployments are being made under the radar of government supervision of spectrum regulation and sponsorship of TD-SCDMA.
India - Though India do not have any B2C WiMax network few companies are doing on experimental basis, some of them are: Reliance Launches WiMAX Services for consumers in Bangalore & Pune on July 4th; VSNL launched India's First WiMAX services; BSNL launches WiMax services in 10 cities across India, etc.
Iran - Laser Telecom Based on 802.16d, the first wimax Network deployed in Iran, with 80% coverage of Tehran. Provides VPN Service to Banks and Insurance companies. Pars-Online Based on 802.16e.
Japan - YOZAN Inc. uses WiMAX as a backbone for its public Wi-Fi service.
Jordan - Umniah Mobile Company recently acquired a WiMAX license in the 3.5 band.
Malaysia - Packet One Networks is ready to lead the market by being the first to deploy on the WiMAX 2.3 GHz spectrum in the region and to establish one of the world’s largest mobile WiMAX 2.3 GHz networks.
New Zealand - nzwireless is deploying WiMAX in the 3.5 GHz spectrum for fixed installation, currently covering the Wellington CBD; CallPlus have purchased nationwide 3.5 GHz WiMAX frequency in the recent Government auction. This is run under the wholesale brand Blue Reach.
Natcom is deploying a nationwide 2.5 GHz WiMAX.
Pakistan - Currently, Pakistan has the largest fully functional Wimax network in the world. Wateen Telecom installed the network (with an initial rollout in seventeen cities) throughout Pakistan using Motorola hardware. Wateen Deployed world's first and largest nationwide WiMAX network and Mobilink Infinity Pakistan's Second WiMax network, etc.
Singapore - QMax has deployed and commercialized on 2.3 GHz licenses. Pacific Internet has launched @irpower for enterprise users on 2.5 GHz licenses.
South Korea - WiBro is served by KT and SK Telecom
Taiwan (of Chinese) - Chunghwa Telecom announced it will partner with Nortel to build Taiwan's first integrated local government mobile WiMAX network in Yilan, providing county-wide broadband wireless access. It will be based on IEEE 802.16e.
UAE - etisalatUAE based provider currently has Wi-max in the Umm-Suqeim region of Dubai. However this is not yet a public service and is only given to those customers who the tele-communications provider can not allocate an ISDN or Broadband service.
Africa
Angola - MSTelcom is deploying a nationwide project at 2.5 GHz. About 60% of Luanda is covered.
Congo - Elix has deployed a citywide WiMAX network in the city of Kinshasa, using licensed spectrum at 3.5 GHz.
Congo, Democratic Republic of - GLNet operates a citywide 802.16d Fixed WiMAX network in the city of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, using the licensed spectrum of 3.5 GHz.
Egypt - NTRA issues WiMax licensed bands to companies requiring license for using the technology for data transfer.
Ethiopia - The incumbent operator ETC has deployed a fixed WiMAX network in the capital city of Addis Abeba using the 3.5 GHz band.
Kenya - AccessKenya has used WiMAX for its broadband residential service. Kenya Data Networks has used WiMAX for schools in remote areas and plans to provide WiMAX service in several cities.
Liberia - Comium offers internet service over WiMAX using Navini Networks in the Monrovia area.
Libya - Libya Telecom & Technology, the national Internet Service Provider in Libya plans to deploy the first commercial WIMAX network based on the 802.16e-2005 WiMAX standard in Libya. LTT plans to launch the commercial service on the network in September 2008.
Namibia - MWEB Namibia started (December 2006) deploying WiMAX in the 3.3 GHz spectrum currently covering the Windhoek area.
Nigeria - XS Broadband has WiMAX licenses for 24 of the 36 Nigerian states, including the major cities. Networks have been deployed in most major cities to serve banks, enterprises and other applications.
South Africa - Telecoms Regulator ICASA has only issued four licences for commercial WiMax services: to wireless broadband solutions provider iBurst, state-owned signal distributor Sentech, second network operator Neotel, Telkom, all on the 3.5 GHz band.
The information I gave only includes the issues of parts of the countries, actually, the companies in most countries all over the world had their commercial or technologies behaviors or contact to WiMAX area. It makes that WiMAX spread over the world with high speed and the interested companies realized its benefit and foreground, especially in developing countries.
Reference:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks
Europe:
Austria - WiMAX Telecom holds 3.5 GHz licences for the entire country.
Belgium - Clearwire covers mainly Brussels.
Bulgaria - Max Telecom Ltd. and Trans Telecom holds a class A license in the 3.5 GHz band (2x21 MHz) and has deployed nation-wide network moving towards mobile WiMAX technology; Nexcom Bulgaria, Mtel and Carrier BG hold class B licenses.
Crotia - Divide into twenty counties and capital Zagreb, and 4 frequency blocks every county; VIPnet and OiV hold 3.5 GHz licences for the capital Zagreb.
Denmark - A few companies are using WiMAX with differen frequencies depite of government reluctance to allow private companies to use WiMAX frequency ranges. The largest cities are covered by Clearwire.
Estonia - A total of 4 licenses in the 3.5 - 3.6 GHz range has been issued to five companies. Norby Telecom, Baltic Broadband and Tele2 have national-wide licenses and Levira. Elion share the same frequency.
Finland - Fifteen WiMAX operators in Finland spread throughout the country. SuomiCom has partial coverage in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
France - Iliad is currently the only owner of a national level license which is the owner of the French ISP; Altitude Telecom deployed WiMAX in rural areas of France; Any-Port uses unlicensed 2.4 and 5.4 GHz bands to provide wireless broadband to the yachting community on the French, Italian and Spanish Rivieras.
Germany - Deutsche Breitband Dienste (DBD), start its commercial WiMAX operation in Berlin in Nov. 2005 under its brand MAXXonair using WiMAX from airspan networks. Several networks in some other cities were deployed till now. It uses 3.5 GHz WLL licenses with WiMAX technology. Clearwire, Inquam and DBD now hold licenses for the entire country.
Greece - OTE has a pilot WiMAX network in operation in Mount Athos and is planning nationside deployment.
Ireland - National University of Ireland, Maynooth Public Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) Network in July 2008; then the Intel Ireland WiMAX Trials.
Italy - Italian Ministry of Defense currently holds the 3.5 GHz band, and is about to free the band through auctions in order to let the Government sell licences. All licenses available were awarded to different operators in an auction ended on February 2008.
Malta - There are three licences in 3.5 GHz band awarded by the Malta Communications Authority to Vodafone, Go Mobile, Cellcom in Oct 2005. Only Vodafone has commercially launched a broadband and VOIP service over WiMax in July 2007.
Netherlands - Worldmax has announced it will deployed mobile WiMAX in the 3.5GHz band.
Poland - Neta network in about 50 cities; NASK in 5 cities; and so on.
Russia - Russian leader of wireless broadband Enforta operates the network in 35 largest capitals of Russia with total popular 50M, uses Alvarion and InfiNet Wireless equipment for its WiMAX network; Mirkin Group aims to provide Free WiMAX connection for individual use. Summa Telecom currently holds national 2.5-2.7GHz license; Synterra WiMAX uses equipment from Nextnet Wireless for its WiMAX network in Moscow region.
Slovakia - WiMAX Telecom holds 3.5 GHz license.
Slovenia - APEK has issued two WiMAX licences on Oct. 2006: Telekom Slovenije connected first WiMAX broadband user on March, 2007; Tok telekomunikacije sold to the American company Winvest Inc. .
Sweden - Telia Sonera has installed WiMAX in 21 counties.
UK - Wi-Manx isle of Man based service provider, holds a 3.6-3.8 GHz licence and was the first to launch a commercial licensed WiMAX service in the UK; FREEDOM4 holds 3.6 GHz licensed spectrum and is deploying WiMAX throughout the UK; UK Broadband a subsidiary of PCCW, owns 3.5 GHz licences; BT is planning to install six WiMAX antennas and associated equipment on the tallest building in Newcastle on Tyne; Metranet, Brighton provide connectivity to Brighton and Hovn City Council and the University of Sussex amongst others; Nomad Digital and T-Mobile have implemented a trackside WiMAX network on the London to Brighton railway line.
Ukraine - Ukrainian High Technologies Ltd. holds the license for 3.4-3.7 GHz range and currently operates WiMAX networks in Kiev and Kharkiv based on Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 client terminals.
America
Bolivia - Telecel S.A holds a lilcence in the 3.5 GHz band and deployed a WiMAX network in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in 2007 for internet broadband services.
Brazil - A few Brazilian companies already have rights to important parts of the WiMAX spectrum, both at 2.5 GHz (MMDS band) and 3.5 GHz. Brazilian Agency of Telecommunications to sell licences for WiMAX.
Canada - MetroBridge Networks serves businesses in British Columbia with connections up to 3 Mbit/s with >7500 km² of coverage area; Sogetel offer WiMAX connection for Nicolet- Yamaska and St-Hyacinthe (MRC Maskoutain) in Quebec; Primus Canada and Mipps Inc. are jointly conducting WiMAX IEEE 802.16e-2005 (3.5 GHz) trials in Hamilton, Ontario, using Alcatel-Lucent's new WiMAX equipment; MDS Wireless owns and operates one of the largest WiMax networks in Southern Ontario providing internet services to residential and business users.
Colombia - Orbitel launched in Cali the first WiMAX network of Colombia in July 2006; Colombian company Telecom launched a PRE-WiMAX network in Bucaramanga. Orbitel, ETB and Telecom hold 3.5 GHz licences for the entire country in January 20 2006; In November 23, 2006 Cable Union de Occidente, Avantel and others won licences to operate WiMax in several regions of Colombia.
Costa Rica - Radiografica Costarricense S.A. started offering the service on the second week of 2008; QTEL Costa Rica has deployed a national long-haul backbone throughout the entire country.
Mexico - Axtel commercizlized WiMAX for Monterrey city in Oct. 2005; Ultranet2go provides WiMAX services in four states.
Panama - WIPET is the first Company to deploy a WiMax network in Panama beginning in January of 2008 and covering Panama City and Coronado Beach.
Paraguay - Tigo Banda Ancha is currently using a WiMAX network; Hipuu / Nucleo was the first to deploy a WiMax network in Paraguay. They use RedMAX from Redline Communications.
Peru - Telmex x-plor is currently using a WiMAX network offering voice and data services in many cities.
USA - DigitalBridge Communications launched the first commercially available WiMAX network in the United States in 2007 under the name BridgeMAXX and holds 2.5 GHz licenses in several regions; Nth Air holds a nationwide 3.65 GHz license. Sprint Nextel holds licences in the 2.5 GHz band covering most of the U.S. Sprint plans to build a "Nationwide advanced wireless broadband network expected to cover 100 million people in 2008." Clearwire holds 2.5 GHz licences in several regions, and is running a test market in the Northwestern United States in preparation to deploy a nationwide network to rival the other nationwide carriers. In May 2008, Sprint Nextel announced a plan to merge their WiMax operation under the Clearwire name, with additional
investment from five other technology companies. NextWave Wireless holds licences in the 1.7 GHz and 2.1 GHz band. Xanadoo operates Navini Networks-based pre-WiMax networks in the 2.5 GHz spectrum in 6 markets in the midwest. Open Range Communications will build a 17-state WiMAX network providing wireless broadband to 500+ un-served and underserved rural American communities. Conterra, RazzoLink and Quad-Cities Online in some other cities also use WiMAX based network.
Venezuela - Movilmax has deployed Wimax to the IEEE 802.16e standard in Caracas and is the first which operates in 2.5 GHz.
Asia Pacific
Australia - Unwired holds licences in the 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands, and has plans to build a mobile WiMax network on the 2.3 GHz band once WiMax-Forum-certified hardware is available. This will be a replacement to its proprietary fixed wireless system which uses the 3.5 GHz band. Austar holds licences in the 3.5 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands; The services provider more recently ran an extensive trial of a standard mobile WiMAX solution provided by Nortel. Digital River Networks are further deploying fixed WiMAX network in areas of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria with extensive field trials operating in the suburbs of Melbourne; The company has existing wireless network platforms in 34 regional areas of Australia which will be converted to Wi-Max before June 2009.
Bahrain - Zain Covers the Kingdom of Bahrain and has used WiMAX for High Speed Internet under the product Zain@Home.
China - Spectrum is the impediment to deployments in China. However some progress has been made but deployments are being made under the radar of government supervision of spectrum regulation and sponsorship of TD-SCDMA.
India - Though India do not have any B2C WiMax network few companies are doing on experimental basis, some of them are: Reliance Launches WiMAX Services for consumers in Bangalore & Pune on July 4th; VSNL launched India's First WiMAX services; BSNL launches WiMax services in 10 cities across India, etc.
Iran - Laser Telecom Based on 802.16d, the first wimax Network deployed in Iran, with 80% coverage of Tehran. Provides VPN Service to Banks and Insurance companies. Pars-Online Based on 802.16e.
Japan - YOZAN Inc. uses WiMAX as a backbone for its public Wi-Fi service.
Jordan - Umniah Mobile Company recently acquired a WiMAX license in the 3.5 band.
Malaysia - Packet One Networks is ready to lead the market by being the first to deploy on the WiMAX 2.3 GHz spectrum in the region and to establish one of the world’s largest mobile WiMAX 2.3 GHz networks.
New Zealand - nzwireless is deploying WiMAX in the 3.5 GHz spectrum for fixed installation, currently covering the Wellington CBD; CallPlus have purchased nationwide 3.5 GHz WiMAX frequency in the recent Government auction. This is run under the wholesale brand Blue Reach.
Natcom is deploying a nationwide 2.5 GHz WiMAX.
Pakistan - Currently, Pakistan has the largest fully functional Wimax network in the world. Wateen Telecom installed the network (with an initial rollout in seventeen cities) throughout Pakistan using Motorola hardware. Wateen Deployed world's first and largest nationwide WiMAX network and Mobilink Infinity Pakistan's Second WiMax network, etc.
Singapore - QMax has deployed and commercialized on 2.3 GHz licenses. Pacific Internet has launched @irpower for enterprise users on 2.5 GHz licenses.
South Korea - WiBro is served by KT and SK Telecom
Taiwan (of Chinese) - Chunghwa Telecom announced it will partner with Nortel to build Taiwan's first integrated local government mobile WiMAX network in Yilan, providing county-wide broadband wireless access. It will be based on IEEE 802.16e.
UAE - etisalatUAE based provider currently has Wi-max in the Umm-Suqeim region of Dubai. However this is not yet a public service and is only given to those customers who the tele-communications provider can not allocate an ISDN or Broadband service.
Africa
Angola - MSTelcom is deploying a nationwide project at 2.5 GHz. About 60% of Luanda is covered.
Congo - Elix has deployed a citywide WiMAX network in the city of Kinshasa, using licensed spectrum at 3.5 GHz.
Congo, Democratic Republic of - GLNet operates a citywide 802.16d Fixed WiMAX network in the city of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi, using the licensed spectrum of 3.5 GHz.
Egypt - NTRA issues WiMax licensed bands to companies requiring license for using the technology for data transfer.
Ethiopia - The incumbent operator ETC has deployed a fixed WiMAX network in the capital city of Addis Abeba using the 3.5 GHz band.
Kenya - AccessKenya has used WiMAX for its broadband residential service. Kenya Data Networks has used WiMAX for schools in remote areas and plans to provide WiMAX service in several cities.
Liberia - Comium offers internet service over WiMAX using Navini Networks in the Monrovia area.
Libya - Libya Telecom & Technology, the national Internet Service Provider in Libya plans to deploy the first commercial WIMAX network based on the 802.16e-2005 WiMAX standard in Libya. LTT plans to launch the commercial service on the network in September 2008.
Namibia - MWEB Namibia started (December 2006) deploying WiMAX in the 3.3 GHz spectrum currently covering the Windhoek area.
Nigeria - XS Broadband has WiMAX licenses for 24 of the 36 Nigerian states, including the major cities. Networks have been deployed in most major cities to serve banks, enterprises and other applications.
South Africa - Telecoms Regulator ICASA has only issued four licences for commercial WiMax services: to wireless broadband solutions provider iBurst, state-owned signal distributor Sentech, second network operator Neotel, Telkom, all on the 3.5 GHz band.
The information I gave only includes the issues of parts of the countries, actually, the companies in most countries all over the world had their commercial or technologies behaviors or contact to WiMAX area. It makes that WiMAX spread over the world with high speed and the interested companies realized its benefit and foreground, especially in developing countries.
Reference:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks
Sunday, July 13, 2008
3.4 Competing Technologies
Since the very high speed running of wireless communication technology, it's not wise to concentrate only one standard or technology. A good advice is to look around as many as relevant and comparable technologies with worldwide view. Currently, a lot of interesting technologies such as HiperMAN, UMTS related, HSPA, CDMA2000 and so on are developing fleetly at different situation and environment. Even though I believe within a certain period in future, WiMAX will be the most promising standard and technology to be developed for wireless access, we also need to know some other competing and great technologies which may be exceeding than WiMAX in some special aspects. In this section, such these technologies will be introduced briefly and concentration will be their comparison.
HiperMAN
HiperMAN stands for High Performance Radio Metropolitan Area Network and is a standard created by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN) group to provide a wireless network communication in the 2 - 11 GHz bands across Europe and other countries which follow the ETSI standard. Actually, The ETSI HiperMAN is commonly thought to be the equivalent of IEEE 802.16 (or WiMAX). HiperMAN is a European alternative to WiMAX (or the IEEE 802.16 standard) and the Korean technology WiBro. Wibro will be introduced later.
HiperMAN is aiming principally for providing broadband Wireless DSL, while covering a large geographic area. The standardization focuses on broadband solutions optimized for access in frequency bands below 11 GHz (mainly in the 3.5 GHz band). HiperMAN is optimised for packet switched networks, and supports fixed and nomadic applications, primarily in the residential and small business user environments. Like Fixed WiMAX, HiperMAN is an interoperable FBWA (Fixed Broadband Wireless Access) system operating at radio frequencies 2 - 11 GHz. HiperMAN standard took the IEEE 802.16 and the amendment of IEEE 802.16a PHY as a baseline, thus, both OFDM-based PHY layers shall comply with each other and a global OFDM system could emerge. HiperMAN has been designed to fulfill today's most promising challenges[1]: Nonprofessional installation of terminals to significantly cut the deployment cost, is enabled due to non-line-of sight operation capability; rapidly scalable infrastructure deployment will decrease time to market for new broadband services which will be crucial for the success of new operators; efficient spectrum usage enables operators to offer services requiring high peak bit rate; modular cost-effective growth is possible becouse the main cost of radio access lies in the equipment itself; radio offers the possibility of selective access, easier bridging of distances to customers than fiber or copper; QoS support for packet-based services is provided by the system. Also, HiperMAN enables both PTMP and Mesh network configurations. HiperMAN also supports both FDD and TDD frequency allocations and H-FDD terminals. All this is achieved with a minimum number of options to simplify implementation and interoperability [2].
UMTS
UMTS is the short term of Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, which is one of the third-generation (3G) cell phone technologies. Currently, the most common form of UMTS uses W-CDMA as the underlying air interface. It is standardized by the 3GPP (The 3rd Generation Partnership Project), and is the European answer to the ITU IMT-2000 requirements for 3G cellular radio system. UMTS supports up to 14 Mbit/s data transfer rates in theory , although at the moment users in deployed networks can expect a transfer rate of up to 384 Kbit/s for R99 handsets, and 7.2 Mbit/s for HSDPA handsets in the downlink connection. This is still much greater than the 9.6 kbit/s of a single GSM error-corrected circuit switched data channel or multiple 9.6 kbit/s channels in HSCSD (14.4 kbit/s for CDMAOne), and—in competition to other network technologies such as CDMA2000, PHS or WLAN—offers access to the World Wide Web and other data services on mobile devices. This means UMTS is the more advanced standard than GSM in this family. Since 2006, UMTS networks in many countries have been or are in the process of being upgraded with HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), sometimes known as 3.5G. Work is also progressing on improving the uplink transfer speed with the HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access). Moreover, in long term, the 3GPP Long Term Evolution project plans to move UMTS to 4G speeds of 100Mbit.s down and 50 Mbit/s up, suing a next generation air interface technology based on OFDM. In this degree, UMTS is a typical competitor of WiMAX. UMTS supports mobile video conferencing as well, although experience in Japan and elsewhere has shown that user demand for video calls is not very high.
Technologically, UMTS combines the W-CDMA, TD-CDMA (or TD-SCDMA) air interface, GSM's Mobile application part (MAP) core, and the GSM family of speed codecs [3]. It uses a pair of 5 MHz channels and in contrast, CDMA2000 system uses one or more artitrary 1.25 MHz channels for each direction of communication. The specific frequency bands originally defined by the UMTS standard are 1.885–2.025 GHz for the uplink and 2.11–2.2 GHz for the downlink. But in some other countries, the frequency bands are different a little bit such as in U.S., 1.71-1.755 GHz and 2.11-2.155 GHz will be used instead. The 3G handsets such as phones, PDA, smartphones and external modems are the main supporters and users of UMTS standards. This kind of phones are highly portable and interoperable. The major technique we may concern is HSPA in UMTS family. At this moment, the main problem is the available frequency bands for UMTS and compatibility. The comparison with WiMAX of UMTS is basically on the internet access side. HSPA will be discussed to compare with Mobile WiMAX as below paragraphs.
HSPA
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a collaboration that brings together a number of telecommunications standards bodies. The USA, Europe, Japan, SouthKorea and China jointly formed the 3GPP. At present, it has more than 400 membercompanies and institutions. The 3GPP defines GSM and WCDMA specifications fora complete mobile system, including terminal aspects, radio access networks, corenetworks, and parts of the service network. Standardization bodies in each worldregion have a mandate to take the output from the 3GPP and publish it in their regionas formal standards.
Obviously, HSPA involves HSUPA and HSDPA existing in the family provide increased performance by using improved modulation schemes and by refining the protocols by which handsets and base stations communicate. These improvements lead to a better utilization of the existing radio bandwidth provided by UMTS. The number of commercial 3.5G networks--also known as High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, or HSDPA, networks--launched worldwide grew by 69 percent in 2007. There are now 174 commercial HSDPA networks in 76 countries. An additional 38 networks are committed to rollouts, which will bump the total to 211 HSDPA networks in 90 countries. Commercial HSDPA networks are widely available in Western Europe (61 networks), Southeast Asia (35), Eastern Europe (34), the Middle East and Africa (20), and the Americas and the Caribbean (16). Almost two-thirds (62 percent) of existing commercial HSDPA networks support downlink speeds of 3.6 Mbit/s or more, while more than a fifth (21 percent) support the peak downlink speed of 7.2 Mbit/s [4]. Many HSPA rollouts can be achieved by a software upgrade to existing 3G networks, giving 3.5G a headstart over WiMax, which requires dedicated network infrastructure.
Similarly, HSPA and Mobile WiMAX technologies have been designed for high-speed packet-data services. They feature similar technology enablers, including dynamic scheduling, link adaptation, H-ARQ with soft combining, multiple-level QoS, and advanced antenna systems. Notwithstanding, their performance differs due to differences in the physical layer signal format, duplex scheme, handover mechanism, and operating frequency bands [5]. The technical comparison of HSPA and Mobile WiMAX is shown in the table [5] below:
If we look at the information at performance till 2008, we can obtain the conclusion that HSPA and Mobile WiMAX is comparable in many areas. The key differences in areas such as duplex mode (FDD versus TDD), frequency bands, multiple access technology,and control channel design give rise to differences in uplink bit rates and coverage. While the peak data rates, spectral efficiency and network architecture of HSPAEvolution and Mobile WiMAX are similar, HSPA offers better coverage. In short, Mobile WiMAX does not offer any technology advantage over HSPA [5]. So that means HSPA is on the preponderant situation refering to Mobile WiMAX and it's a very strong competitor to WiMAX especially in developed and mature markets!
CDMA2000
CDMA2000 is considered a 2.5G technology in 1xRTT and a 3G technology in EVDO. It is a hybrid 2.5G/3G technology of mobile telecommunications standards which use CDMA, a multiple access scheme for digital radio, to send voice, media, data, and signalling data between mobile phones and cell sites or base stations. CDMA is Code Division Multiple Access for short. and it permits many simultaneous transmitters on the same frequency channel, unlike TDMA, used in GSM and FDMA used in AMPS. Since more phones can be served by fewer cell sites, CDMA based standards have a significant economic advantage over TDMA or FDMA based standards. CDMA will offer high capacity channels. The CDMA2000 standards CDMA2000 1xRTT, CDMA2000 EV-DO, and CDMA2000 EV-DV are approved radio interfaces for the ITU's IMT-2000 standard and a direct successor to 2G CDMA, IS-95 (cdmaOne). CDMA2000 is standardized by 3GPP2. Some details about CDMA2000 1xRTT, CDMA2000 EV-DO, and CDMA2000 EV-DV can be refered to [6].
CDMA2000 is an incompatible competitor of the other major 3G standard UMTS. It is defined to operate at 450MHz, 700MHz, 800MHz, 900MHz, 1700MHz, 1800MHz, 1900MHz and 2100MHz. So if we look at the CDMA (3GPP2) family, Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) and Ultra Mobile Broadband (UMB) are more competitive because EV-DO is a telecommunications standard for wireless transmission of data through radio signals typically for broadband internet access and it was designed as an evolution of the CDMA2000 standard. And UMB is for the project within 3GPP2 to improve the CDMA2000 mobile phone standard for next generation applications and requirements. UMB also was seen to be as pre-4G. To provide compatibility with the systems it replaces, UMB supports handoffs with other technologies including existing CDMA2000 1X and 1xEV-DO systems. However, according to the technology market research firm ABI Research, Ultra-Mobile Broadband might be "dead on arrival". No carrier has announced plans to adopt UMB, and most CDMA carriers in Australia, USA, China, Japan and Korea have already announced plans to adopt HSPA or LTE.
Actually, the CDMA2000 migration path maximizes performance while minimizing costs by sustaining an evolutionary paththat is based on backwards compatibility. This has provided CDMA2000 operators with significant time-to-marketand economic advantages; CDMA2000 technologies provide industry-leading network capacities, low latencies and RF propagation characteristicsenabling operators to offer high-quality voice and robust broadband and multimedia applications very cost effectivelyin any topology or location; CDMA2000 will remain a leading "core" platform to deliver next-generation mobile broadband services, and will enableoperators to integrate their existing CDMA2000 networks with wider-bandwidth OFDM-based radio technologies such as LTE, UMBTM, WiMAX, DVB-H, MFLO, T/S-DMB, ISDB-T and Wi-Fi (802.11n) to support high-quality multimediaservices in the future. From the research of CDMA Development Group [7], it shows that CDMA2000 continues to strengthen its market position as the leading 3G technology worldwide, providing advanced voice and broadband mobile services across diverse markets, and as an integral component in the next generation of converged mobile broadband services. Some data from "CDG" also show that CDMA2000 is the most widely used 3G solution worldwide[7].
WiBro
WiBro is Wireless Broadband, which is a wireless broadband internet technology being developed in the South Korean. Root from IEEE 802.16e, WiBro is the South Korean service name of Mobile WiMAX international standard.
WiBro adapts TDD for duplexing, OFDMA for multiple access and 8.75 MHz as a channel bandwidth. WiBro was devised to overcome the data rate limitation of mobile phones (for example CDMA 1x) and to add mobility to broadband Internet access (for example ADSL or Wireless LAN). WiBro base stations will offer an aggregate data throughput of 30 to 50 Mbit/s and cover a radius of 1-5 km allowing for the use of portable internet usage. In detail, it will provide mobility for moving devices up to 120 km/h (74.5 miles/h) compared to Wireless LAN having mobility up to walking speed and Mobile Phone having mobility up to 250 km/h. Some Telcos in many countries are trying to commercialize this Mobile WiMAX (or WiBro). For example, TI (Italia), TVA (Brazil), Omnivision (Venezuela), PORTUS (Croatia), and Arialink (Michigan) will provide commercial service after test service around 2006-2007. While WiBro is quite exacting in its requirements from spectrum use to equipment design, WiMAX leaves much of this up to the equipment provider while providing enough detail to ensure interoperability between designs. So WiBro may be considered to be renamed of Mobile WiMAX by the South Korean telecoms industry. In South Korean, SK Telecom and Hanaro Telecom have announced a partnership to roll out WiBro nationwide in Korea, excluding Seoul and six provincial cities. In 2004, Intel and LG executives agreed to ensure compatibility between WiBro and WiMAX technology; Samsung signed a deal with Sprint Nextel to provide equipment for WiBro in Sept. 2005; KT Corporation launched commercial WiBro service in mid-2006 and Sprint, BT, KDDI and TVA have or are trialing WiBro; on 2007, KT launched WiBro coverage for all areas of Seoul including all subway lines.
Comparably, WiBro and HSPA services are different technological platforms but both provide voce/video telephone calls and data transmission services at the same time, which makes it inevitable that they are at war for market dominance. Of course, WiMAX also must be involved into this war because these three competing technologies and standards are comparable. They are leading to different types and areas of markets. And the competition will continue in the future.
[1] Christian Hoymann, Markus P¨uttner, Ingo Forkel, "The HiperMAN Standard - a Performance Analysis", RWTH Aachen University, Germany.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIPERMAN
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMTS
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Packet_Access
[5] "Technical Overview and performance of HSPA and Mobile WiMAX", White Paper of ERICSSON, Sept. 2007.
[6] Vieri Vanghi, Aleksandar Damnjanovic, Branimir Vojcic, "The cdma2000 System for Mobile Communications: 3G Wireless Evolution", Prentice Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies Series, Prentice Hall, 2004.
[7] http://www.cdg.org/
Saturday, July 12, 2008
3.3 Mobile WiMAX
What is Mobile WiMAX? Is there any difference between Mobile WiMAX and IEEE 802.16? How we distinguish Mobile WiMAX and Fixed WiMAX? In this section, basic technology analysis about Mobile WiMAX, products and application, economic perspective, potential, and even challenges will be summarize. I will also mention its situation in developing countries.
Technology and concept domain
In 2005, the standard was amended (IEEE 802.16e-2005 or 802.16e) adding support for data mobility. As mentioned in previous chapter and section, 802.16e basically focus on mobile application for WiMAX technology. It improves on the modulation schemes used in original (Fixed) WiMAX standard by introducing SOFDMA (scalable orthogonal frequency-division multiple access). The system profile in IEEE 802.16e-2005 is not backward compatible with the fixed WiMAX system profile.
Compare with Fixed WiMAX, nowadays, WiMAX is also called Mobile WiMAX as it can serve all usage models from fixed to mobile with the same intrastructure. Actually, without mobility, WiMAX will be suffered because its advantages are buried. Based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard, Mobile WiMAX offers fixed nomadic, portable and mobile capabilities; and Mobile WiMAX doesn't reply on line-of-sight transmissions in lower frequency bands (2 to 11 GHz); it provides enhanced performance, even in fixed and nomadic environments and currently uses TDD; system bandwidth is scalable to adapt to capacity and coverage needs [1]. As I said before, in phisical layer, 802.16e uses SOFDMA to carry data, supporting channel bandwidths of between 1.25 MHz and 20 MHz, with up to 2048 sub-carriers. It supports adaptive modulation and coding, so that in conditions of good signal, a highly efficient 64 QAM coding scheme is used, whereas where the signal is poorer, a more robust BPSK coding mechanism is used. In intermediate conditions, 16 QAM and QPSK can also be employed. Other PHY features include support for Multiple-in Multiple-out (MIMO) antennas in order to provide good NLOS (Non-line-of-sight) characteristics (or higher bandwidth) and Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) for good error correction performance. At the same time, in media access control layer (MAC), it describes a number of Convergence Sublayers which describe how wireline technologies such as Ethernet, ATM and IP are encapsulated on the air interface, and how data is classified, etc. It also describes how secure communications are delivered, by using secure key exchange during authentication, and encryption using AES or DES during data transfer. Further features of the MAC layer include power saving mechanisms and handover mechanisms. QoS in 802.16e is supported by allocating each connection between the SS and the BS (called a service flow in 802.16 terminology) to a specific QoS class. In 802.16e, there are 5 QoS classes which are: Unsolicited Grant Service, Extended Real-time Polling Service, Real-time Polling Service, Non-real-time Polling Service and Best Effort.
Standard, application and market domain
According to products and application, designed from the beginning to connect to the IP network, mobile WiMAX offers low latency and high QoS. It will have no difficulty accessing IP multimedia data or implement technologies such as VoIP. This is the basic argument driving the mobile WiMAX campaign for market acceptance. In the ever widening world of wireless technologies, mobile WiMAX is aimed at a very lucrative market: the delivery of high-data bandwidth digital data streaming off the IP network. In other words, the much-talked-about delivery of mobile services. Mobile WiMAX can be embedded on any number of personal devices such as PDAs, notebook PCs, game consoles, iPods, MP3 players, and cellular phones. As such, its potential to compete with cellular technology is obvious, particularly for broadband, data-centric applications. But mobile WiMAX may also co-exist with cellular technology. WiMAX is not optimized to carry circuit-switched voice traffic. From the WiMAX perspective, voice is a far more appropriate application for cellular technology. The problem with that scenario from the cellular perspective is that the expected growth in mobile revenue is in the data segment. Between 2004 and 2008, a 20% CAGR is forecast for mobile data while revenue for mobile voice traffic is actually expected to drop by a few percent over the same period. Voice revenues will still be almost double data in 2008 but the trend is clear [2]. Mobile WiMAX performance is typically compared to 3G technologies such as EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), and HSUPA. Depending on system configuration, mobile WiMAX has a clear performance edge. The typical and concrete comparison between Mobile WiMAX and HSDPA, etc. will be discussed in the following section.
For the economic phase, the case for mobile WiMAX being a cost effective technology is fundamentally one of standards and interoperability. Equipment must conform to the IEEE 802.16e-2005 and ETSI HiperMAN 1.3.2 standards but it is well known that meeting those standards does not necessarily translate into interoperability between products from different manufacturers [2]. For mobile WiMAX, the WiMAX Forum will reprise its interoperability certification program for fixed WiMAX. Interoperability allows system operators to shop around for base stations and end user equipment as well as decide when to upgrade. One of the more interesting synergies between technologies brings together mobile WiMAX and Wi-Fi capability in a single chipset. This perspective is not as popular with the Wi-Fi camp as it is with the WiMAX proponents. But the combination of the two technologies into a single chipset would certainly bring down the cost of end-user equipment. Perhaps the biggest cost advantage of WiMAX compared to cellular comes not out of standards or higher levels of integration but royalty payments. Royalties paid by manufacturers of WCDMA phones, for example, average between 10% and 15% for the average selling price of the phone. This is big difference from the 2% to 5% royalty charges in the rest of the telecommunications industry. Significantly, the WiMAX Forum is clearly looking for royalty solutions that are far less onerous [2].
For wireless fields, no standard can monopolize the market and technology. Any operator considering mobile WiMAX should take into consideration the following challenges account [3]:
1) There are currently more than 32 million HSPA connections worldwide, with nearly 467 HSPA mobile handsets offering 4Mbps in the downlink, which is comparable to Mobile WiMAX.
2) 3G LTE is expected to be a fully ratified standard by the end of this year, with trials occurring in 2009 and deployments in late 2009 or 2010 offering mobile data rates of up to 170Mbps (2×2 MIMO; 2.6GHz; 20MHz).
3) QUALCOMM’s Gobi technology which supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, EV-DO Rev A will be integrated into laptops this year, which either have been certified, or will be certified with operators such as T-Mobile, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. Tier 1 laptop vendors such as HP and Dell are supporting this.
4) Nearly 97 percent of laptops are shipped with integrated Wi-Fi technology today.
5) The number of dual-mode Wi-Fi/Cellular mobile phones is on the rise with newer models emerging at lower costs with better battery life.
6) Recently Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson invited all interested parties to join an initiative to keep royalty levels for essential LTE patents in mobile devices below 10 percent of the retail price, with the maximum royalty in LTE-enabled notebooks restricted to under $10. It is still unclear if members of the WiMAX Forum have reached an agreement pertaining to the intellectual property rights they possess for Mobile WiMAX.
For these challenges, I totally agree the author in [3] so that WiMAX Forum and IEEE 802.16 Task Group should try to push there work to spread WiMAX more widely and agree more acceptably price in Market besides its high quality in technology domain.
We can not say Mobile WiMAX must be successful in mature mobile broadband markets, but it will have a nice future in Brazil, Russia, India and China, etc., so-called BRIC countries, especially in India according to an analysis made by Cantab Wireless who believe that while Mobile WiMAX is a powerful technology and it cannot fulfil all the expectations placed upon it. Competing against 3G cellular networks in mature telecommunications markets, Mobile WiMAX is considered as the adversary. It's a big challenge for Mobile WiMAX. Hence, the research firm forecast that Mobile WiMAX will not be able to gain a significant foothold in developed markets. Actually, I do not make the agreement about the result from these research firms, but if we look at the developing markets, the situation is not quite so depressing for Mobile WiMAX which is the common attitude of us. Typically, the lack of cellular broadband services in a country implies there is no market for those services to date. Thus, Mobile WiMAX has to make its break in countries which do not include mobile broadband yet but which are developing fast. The BRIC countries match this description well.
Totally speaking, Mobile WiMAX is a well-perspective technology with high quality and perfect service as mobile wireless standard. And Why Mobile WiMAX will be chosen by such a lot of organizations and corporations will be composed in other degree after comparing with other competing standards in the latter chapter.
[1] WiMAX Questions & Answers, WiMAX Forum, Jan. 2008.
[2] Jack Shandle, What is Mobile WiMAX?,
[3] Abu Saeed Khan, Mobile WiMAX - The End is Nigh, 12th Executive Course on Telecom Reform, 2008. http://lirneasia.net/2008/07/mobile-wimax-the-end-is-nigh.
Technology and concept domain
In 2005, the standard was amended (IEEE 802.16e-2005 or 802.16e) adding support for data mobility. As mentioned in previous chapter and section, 802.16e basically focus on mobile application for WiMAX technology. It improves on the modulation schemes used in original (Fixed) WiMAX standard by introducing SOFDMA (scalable orthogonal frequency-division multiple access). The system profile in IEEE 802.16e-2005 is not backward compatible with the fixed WiMAX system profile.
Compare with Fixed WiMAX, nowadays, WiMAX is also called Mobile WiMAX as it can serve all usage models from fixed to mobile with the same intrastructure. Actually, without mobility, WiMAX will be suffered because its advantages are buried. Based on the IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard, Mobile WiMAX offers fixed nomadic, portable and mobile capabilities; and Mobile WiMAX doesn't reply on line-of-sight transmissions in lower frequency bands (2 to 11 GHz); it provides enhanced performance, even in fixed and nomadic environments and currently uses TDD; system bandwidth is scalable to adapt to capacity and coverage needs [1]. As I said before, in phisical layer, 802.16e uses SOFDMA to carry data, supporting channel bandwidths of between 1.25 MHz and 20 MHz, with up to 2048 sub-carriers. It supports adaptive modulation and coding, so that in conditions of good signal, a highly efficient 64 QAM coding scheme is used, whereas where the signal is poorer, a more robust BPSK coding mechanism is used. In intermediate conditions, 16 QAM and QPSK can also be employed. Other PHY features include support for Multiple-in Multiple-out (MIMO) antennas in order to provide good NLOS (Non-line-of-sight) characteristics (or higher bandwidth) and Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) for good error correction performance. At the same time, in media access control layer (MAC), it describes a number of Convergence Sublayers which describe how wireline technologies such as Ethernet, ATM and IP are encapsulated on the air interface, and how data is classified, etc. It also describes how secure communications are delivered, by using secure key exchange during authentication, and encryption using AES or DES during data transfer. Further features of the MAC layer include power saving mechanisms and handover mechanisms. QoS in 802.16e is supported by allocating each connection between the SS and the BS (called a service flow in 802.16 terminology) to a specific QoS class. In 802.16e, there are 5 QoS classes which are: Unsolicited Grant Service, Extended Real-time Polling Service, Real-time Polling Service, Non-real-time Polling Service and Best Effort.
Standard, application and market domain
According to products and application, designed from the beginning to connect to the IP network, mobile WiMAX offers low latency and high QoS. It will have no difficulty accessing IP multimedia data or implement technologies such as VoIP. This is the basic argument driving the mobile WiMAX campaign for market acceptance. In the ever widening world of wireless technologies, mobile WiMAX is aimed at a very lucrative market: the delivery of high-data bandwidth digital data streaming off the IP network. In other words, the much-talked-about delivery of mobile services. Mobile WiMAX can be embedded on any number of personal devices such as PDAs, notebook PCs, game consoles, iPods, MP3 players, and cellular phones. As such, its potential to compete with cellular technology is obvious, particularly for broadband, data-centric applications. But mobile WiMAX may also co-exist with cellular technology. WiMAX is not optimized to carry circuit-switched voice traffic. From the WiMAX perspective, voice is a far more appropriate application for cellular technology. The problem with that scenario from the cellular perspective is that the expected growth in mobile revenue is in the data segment. Between 2004 and 2008, a 20% CAGR is forecast for mobile data while revenue for mobile voice traffic is actually expected to drop by a few percent over the same period. Voice revenues will still be almost double data in 2008 but the trend is clear [2]. Mobile WiMAX performance is typically compared to 3G technologies such as EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access), and HSUPA. Depending on system configuration, mobile WiMAX has a clear performance edge. The typical and concrete comparison between Mobile WiMAX and HSDPA, etc. will be discussed in the following section.
For the economic phase, the case for mobile WiMAX being a cost effective technology is fundamentally one of standards and interoperability. Equipment must conform to the IEEE 802.16e-2005 and ETSI HiperMAN 1.3.2 standards but it is well known that meeting those standards does not necessarily translate into interoperability between products from different manufacturers [2]. For mobile WiMAX, the WiMAX Forum will reprise its interoperability certification program for fixed WiMAX. Interoperability allows system operators to shop around for base stations and end user equipment as well as decide when to upgrade. One of the more interesting synergies between technologies brings together mobile WiMAX and Wi-Fi capability in a single chipset. This perspective is not as popular with the Wi-Fi camp as it is with the WiMAX proponents. But the combination of the two technologies into a single chipset would certainly bring down the cost of end-user equipment. Perhaps the biggest cost advantage of WiMAX compared to cellular comes not out of standards or higher levels of integration but royalty payments. Royalties paid by manufacturers of WCDMA phones, for example, average between 10% and 15% for the average selling price of the phone. This is big difference from the 2% to 5% royalty charges in the rest of the telecommunications industry. Significantly, the WiMAX Forum is clearly looking for royalty solutions that are far less onerous [2].
For wireless fields, no standard can monopolize the market and technology. Any operator considering mobile WiMAX should take into consideration the following challenges account [3]:
1) There are currently more than 32 million HSPA connections worldwide, with nearly 467 HSPA mobile handsets offering 4Mbps in the downlink, which is comparable to Mobile WiMAX.
2) 3G LTE is expected to be a fully ratified standard by the end of this year, with trials occurring in 2009 and deployments in late 2009 or 2010 offering mobile data rates of up to 170Mbps (2×2 MIMO; 2.6GHz; 20MHz).
3) QUALCOMM’s Gobi technology which supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, EV-DO Rev A will be integrated into laptops this year, which either have been certified, or will be certified with operators such as T-Mobile, Telefonica, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. Tier 1 laptop vendors such as HP and Dell are supporting this.
4) Nearly 97 percent of laptops are shipped with integrated Wi-Fi technology today.
5) The number of dual-mode Wi-Fi/Cellular mobile phones is on the rise with newer models emerging at lower costs with better battery life.
6) Recently Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, NEC, NextWave Wireless, Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks and Sony Ericsson invited all interested parties to join an initiative to keep royalty levels for essential LTE patents in mobile devices below 10 percent of the retail price, with the maximum royalty in LTE-enabled notebooks restricted to under $10. It is still unclear if members of the WiMAX Forum have reached an agreement pertaining to the intellectual property rights they possess for Mobile WiMAX.
For these challenges, I totally agree the author in [3] so that WiMAX Forum and IEEE 802.16 Task Group should try to push there work to spread WiMAX more widely and agree more acceptably price in Market besides its high quality in technology domain.
We can not say Mobile WiMAX must be successful in mature mobile broadband markets, but it will have a nice future in Brazil, Russia, India and China, etc., so-called BRIC countries, especially in India according to an analysis made by Cantab Wireless who believe that while Mobile WiMAX is a powerful technology and it cannot fulfil all the expectations placed upon it. Competing against 3G cellular networks in mature telecommunications markets, Mobile WiMAX is considered as the adversary. It's a big challenge for Mobile WiMAX. Hence, the research firm forecast that Mobile WiMAX will not be able to gain a significant foothold in developed markets. Actually, I do not make the agreement about the result from these research firms, but if we look at the developing markets, the situation is not quite so depressing for Mobile WiMAX which is the common attitude of us. Typically, the lack of cellular broadband services in a country implies there is no market for those services to date. Thus, Mobile WiMAX has to make its break in countries which do not include mobile broadband yet but which are developing fast. The BRIC countries match this description well.
Totally speaking, Mobile WiMAX is a well-perspective technology with high quality and perfect service as mobile wireless standard. And Why Mobile WiMAX will be chosen by such a lot of organizations and corporations will be composed in other degree after comparing with other competing standards in the latter chapter.
[1] WiMAX Questions & Answers, WiMAX Forum, Jan. 2008.
[2] Jack Shandle, What is Mobile WiMAX?,
[3] Abu Saeed Khan, Mobile WiMAX - The End is Nigh, 12th Executive Course on Telecom Reform, 2008. http://lirneasia.net/2008/07/mobile-wimax-the-end-is-nigh.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
3.2 Related associations of WiMAX
Without doubt, WiMAX not only based on the development of technolpgy, but also the institutional issues should be related to some associations which mainly aim at supporting the standard and regulation. It's significant because many aspects of standard-related issues should take policy, marketing, popularization, improvement, usage... So here I would like to introduce some associations which are basically supporting WiMAX.
In this section, primarily, WiMAX forum and WiSOA (WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance). Besides, other associations are related to WiMAX technology as well for supporting which will be mentioned at the end.
WiMAX Forum
The WiMAX Forum was established in June 2001and is the organization dedicated to certifying the interoperability of WiMAX products. Those that pass conformance and interoperability testing achieve the "WiMAX Forum Certified" designation and can display this mark on their products and marketing materials. Some vendors claim that their equipment is "WiMAX-ready", "WiMAX-compliant", or "pre-WiMAX", if they are not officially WiMAX Forum Certified.
WiMAX Forum Mission: "WiMAX Forum is the worldwide consortium focused on global adoption of WiMAX and chartered to establish certification processes that achieve interoperability, publish technical specifications based on recognized standards, promote the technology and pursue a favorable regulatory environment." [1] The strategic objectives are those: 1) Establish cost effective and timely certification processes and certification infrastructure for WiMAX that achieve device and network interoperability. They ensure that the WiMAX Forum Certification is valued and trusted by network providers, service providers and consumers worldwide, which means that the WiMAX technology must be certificated by some official association and then related-people or organizations will be confident to use this technique and service; Cost effective WiMAX certification also need to be required; On time issue is also important due to test specification must be processed and during allowable period. 2) Publish technical specifications to achieve a commercially viable global ecosystem for WiMAX. They aim to deliver high quality technical specifications based on IEEE 802.16 standard to get high performance internet network architecture supporting fixed, portable, nomadic and mobile users; it's also necessary to establish a WiMAX technology blueprint and roadmap to support a wide variety of applications and concept and scenarios that setup a robust ecosystem. WiMAX to WiMAX network and inter-working for WiMAX networks with other wireless networks should be enabled or available; 3) Promote the brand and technology to establish WiMAX as the worldwide market leader for broadband wireless. This is the promoting issue and development aspect. WiMAX forum aim at promoting attractive services and economic value propositions to foster demand of users, promoting WiMAX to ensure spectrum availability and favorable regulatory enviroment, promoting the advantages of WiMAX to facilitate growth of the ecosystem worldwide. The same idea is that the strategies of WiMAX not only focus on technology, regulation and there close relationship, but also concentrate on economic environment situation based on ecosystem worldwide.
The WiMAX Forum definition of itself is that "The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace." [1] The Forum’s goal is to accelerateglobal deployments of and grow the market for standards-based, interoperable, broadbandwireless access (BWA) solutions. The economies of scale realizable throughout thevalue chain will result in cost points and performance levels unachievable by proprietaryapproaches. Computing history has shown that innovation occurs far more rapidly once astandards-based industry structure is in place, with consumers being the primarybeneficiary. Reductions in equipment costs and consistent approaches to network design also vastly improve the business model for service providers.
With the flexibility that wireless broadband access affords, a service provider canoffer premium “on demand” high-speed connectivity for events such as trade shows, withhundreds or even thousands of 802.11 hot spot users. These Wi-Fi hot spots would use802.16 solutions as their backhaul to the core network. Such “on demand” connectivitycould also benefit businesses, such as construction sites, that have nomadic broadbandconnectivity needs. Most importantly, the impact of this technology – assuming favorable regulatoryconditions -- will be very significant in developing nations where service providershaven’t deployed wired infrastructure or where there isn’t sufficient quality wiring tosupport a growing computer-literate population. Especially for low population densityareas (rural and remote) and associated “green field” deployments, wireless broadbandaccess may be far easier, faster and cheaper to deploy than new wired infrastructure.
Another important thing is Global Harmonization. One of the key hurdles to overcome in order to accelerate worldwide broadbandwireless access (BWA) is cost. Although the total cost of deployment includes myriadfactors (licenses, rooftop or tower space, backhaul expenses), the cost of the actualequipment is a major component, and is the focus of service providers and manufacturersinvolved in the WiMAX Forum. Global harmonization, or the uniform allocation of spectrum worldwide, is crucial to lowering equipment costs because radios are a majorcost component in developing WiMAX Forum Certified* systems. To maximize radioperformance and minimize costs, radios must be optimized for each of the majorspectrum bands identified as suitable for WiMAX deployments. The fewer radios neededto serve the worldwide BWA market, the greater the economies of scale that can beachieved in manufacturing, resulting in lower equipment cost. The WiMAX Forum also advocates that governments remain technology neutralin allocating spectrum. Spectrum bands should be allocated in a manner that allowslicense holders to deploy the most appropriate services and technologies for their market,as long as those solutions adhere to the regulatory requirements to support compatibilityof services and deployments, and behave in a safe, fair and consistent manner. With theincreasingly rapid rate of technology advancement, approaches that specify whichtechnology may be used in a particular allocation risk becoming quickly outdated orobsolete. The WiMAX Forum is committed to work with policy makers to ensureeconomically beneficial and efficient use of spectrum.
"WiMAX Forum Certified™ products are fully interoperable and support broadband fixed, portable and mobile services. Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements."[1] The benifits of WiMAX Forum Certified products will ensure interoperability among devices and networks to ensure service anytime, anywhere at a lower price point. The ultimate goal of the WiMAX Forum is to acceletrate the introduction of cost-effective broadband wireless services into the marketplace. They also can benefit enterprises by bringing new competition into the marketplace and lowering prices, as well as reaching out to locations not served by wireline internet access. This is especially relevant for industries like gas, mining, agriculture, transportation, construction and others that operate in remote locations. Actually, WiMAX Forum plans to have five certification test labs located in the U.S., Europe, China, Korea and Tawan. With three more labs located in India, Japan, and Tawan planned to be opened in 2008, Mobile WiMAX certification will have capacity to support global deployments.
According to products being commercially available, to date, approximately 30 fixed WiMAX products have attained certification. initial certification is based on the 802.16 2004 standard. The new 802.16e standard was approved in 2005 to deliver mobile internet services and mobile WiMAX certification is on track and meeting WiMAX Forum schedules to deliver WiMAX Forum certified products into market. Wireless broadband access systems from WiMAX Forum members are already involved in more than 275 trials and deployments in more than 65 countries around the world. Examples of operators that are trialing or deploying WiMAX technology include BT in UK, France Telecom, Rogers in Canada, Korea Telecom, KDDI in Japan, Telmex in Mexicao, Unwired in Australia, Reliance in India, SingTel in Singapore. SprintNextel and Clearwire joined together to construct the first U.S. mobile broadband network using WiMAX technology, and build the global development of WiMAX based services.
In total, global development and environment are tremendously important for WiMAX technology and 802.16 WiMAX standard. In today's world, broadband access is essential for the economic growth of nations. The Forum believes it is imperative for administrations to take a leadership rolein ensuring that its citizens benefit from the greatest choice of broadband access suppliersand the most cost effective broadband access services & devices. [2]
WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance
Now I would also like to give the abstract introduce of WiSOA. WiSOA is the first global organization composed exclusively of owners of WiMAX spectrum with plans to deploy WiMAX technology in those bands. WiSOA is focussed on the regulation, commercialisation, and deployment of WiMAX spectrum in the 2.3–2.5 GHz and the 3.4–3.5 GHz ranges. WiSOA are dedicated to educating and informing its members, industry representatives and government regulators of the importance of WiMAX spectrum, its use, and the potential for WiMAX to revolutionise broadband. The key objective of the WiSOA is to accelerate the acceptance and deployment of interoperable WiMAX networks through a coordinated global effort. [3]
WiSOA strictly represents the needs of those companies and organization that own and operate WiMAX spectrum. its particular focus is on WiMAX networks, most especially on resolving thoses issues related to the definition and implementation of interoperable network infrastructure and services. Specially, WiSOA mainly focus on spectrum issues of WiMAX. WiSOA is intend to assist member who have committed to deploy WiMAX and who are the forefront of the development of this new branch of the telecommunications industry. WiSOA acknowledges that the value of the spectrum is essential to ensuring the unrestricted flow of capital to WiMAX operators.
Once there is a specific association who can pay attention to the spectrum problem, it will be more positive for WiMAX standard progress so that frequencies can be used more effectively and it's better for promotion of global and worldwide wireless network and economic and marketing maturely development.
Of course, WiMAX also have relation with other association such as Wireless Communications Association International (WCA), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) for some particular details of standards and regulations. However, WiMAX Forum and WiSOA are playing a core and primary role for WiMAX technology and institutional issues for global blueprint.
[1] http://www.wimaxforum.org/
[2] "Regulatory Position and Goals of the WiMAX Forum", White paper of WiMAX Forum, Chair, Regulatory Working Group, Aug. 2004
[3] http://www.wisoa.net/
In this section, primarily, WiMAX forum and WiSOA (WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance). Besides, other associations are related to WiMAX technology as well for supporting which will be mentioned at the end.
WiMAX Forum
The WiMAX Forum was established in June 2001and is the organization dedicated to certifying the interoperability of WiMAX products. Those that pass conformance and interoperability testing achieve the "WiMAX Forum Certified" designation and can display this mark on their products and marketing materials. Some vendors claim that their equipment is "WiMAX-ready", "WiMAX-compliant", or "pre-WiMAX", if they are not officially WiMAX Forum Certified.WiMAX Forum Mission: "WiMAX Forum is the worldwide consortium focused on global adoption of WiMAX and chartered to establish certification processes that achieve interoperability, publish technical specifications based on recognized standards, promote the technology and pursue a favorable regulatory environment." [1] The strategic objectives are those: 1) Establish cost effective and timely certification processes and certification infrastructure for WiMAX that achieve device and network interoperability. They ensure that the WiMAX Forum Certification is valued and trusted by network providers, service providers and consumers worldwide, which means that the WiMAX technology must be certificated by some official association and then related-people or organizations will be confident to use this technique and service; Cost effective WiMAX certification also need to be required; On time issue is also important due to test specification must be processed and during allowable period. 2) Publish technical specifications to achieve a commercially viable global ecosystem for WiMAX. They aim to deliver high quality technical specifications based on IEEE 802.16 standard to get high performance internet network architecture supporting fixed, portable, nomadic and mobile users; it's also necessary to establish a WiMAX technology blueprint and roadmap to support a wide variety of applications and concept and scenarios that setup a robust ecosystem. WiMAX to WiMAX network and inter-working for WiMAX networks with other wireless networks should be enabled or available; 3) Promote the brand and technology to establish WiMAX as the worldwide market leader for broadband wireless. This is the promoting issue and development aspect. WiMAX forum aim at promoting attractive services and economic value propositions to foster demand of users, promoting WiMAX to ensure spectrum availability and favorable regulatory enviroment, promoting the advantages of WiMAX to facilitate growth of the ecosystem worldwide. The same idea is that the strategies of WiMAX not only focus on technology, regulation and there close relationship, but also concentrate on economic environment situation based on ecosystem worldwide.
The WiMAX Forum definition of itself is that "The WiMAX Forum is an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify and promote the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless products based upon the harmonized IEEE 802.16/ETSI HiperMAN standard. A WiMAX Forum goal is to accelerate the introduction of these systems into the marketplace." [1] The Forum’s goal is to accelerateglobal deployments of and grow the market for standards-based, interoperable, broadbandwireless access (BWA) solutions. The economies of scale realizable throughout thevalue chain will result in cost points and performance levels unachievable by proprietaryapproaches. Computing history has shown that innovation occurs far more rapidly once astandards-based industry structure is in place, with consumers being the primarybeneficiary. Reductions in equipment costs and consistent approaches to network design also vastly improve the business model for service providers.
With the flexibility that wireless broadband access affords, a service provider canoffer premium “on demand” high-speed connectivity for events such as trade shows, withhundreds or even thousands of 802.11 hot spot users. These Wi-Fi hot spots would use802.16 solutions as their backhaul to the core network. Such “on demand” connectivitycould also benefit businesses, such as construction sites, that have nomadic broadbandconnectivity needs. Most importantly, the impact of this technology – assuming favorable regulatoryconditions -- will be very significant in developing nations where service providershaven’t deployed wired infrastructure or where there isn’t sufficient quality wiring tosupport a growing computer-literate population. Especially for low population densityareas (rural and remote) and associated “green field” deployments, wireless broadbandaccess may be far easier, faster and cheaper to deploy than new wired infrastructure.
Another important thing is Global Harmonization. One of the key hurdles to overcome in order to accelerate worldwide broadbandwireless access (BWA) is cost. Although the total cost of deployment includes myriadfactors (licenses, rooftop or tower space, backhaul expenses), the cost of the actualequipment is a major component, and is the focus of service providers and manufacturersinvolved in the WiMAX Forum. Global harmonization, or the uniform allocation of spectrum worldwide, is crucial to lowering equipment costs because radios are a majorcost component in developing WiMAX Forum Certified* systems. To maximize radioperformance and minimize costs, radios must be optimized for each of the majorspectrum bands identified as suitable for WiMAX deployments. The fewer radios neededto serve the worldwide BWA market, the greater the economies of scale that can beachieved in manufacturing, resulting in lower equipment cost. The WiMAX Forum also advocates that governments remain technology neutralin allocating spectrum. Spectrum bands should be allocated in a manner that allowslicense holders to deploy the most appropriate services and technologies for their market,as long as those solutions adhere to the regulatory requirements to support compatibilityof services and deployments, and behave in a safe, fair and consistent manner. With theincreasingly rapid rate of technology advancement, approaches that specify whichtechnology may be used in a particular allocation risk becoming quickly outdated orobsolete. The WiMAX Forum is committed to work with policy makers to ensureeconomically beneficial and efficient use of spectrum.
"WiMAX Forum Certified™ products are fully interoperable and support broadband fixed, portable and mobile services. Along these lines, the WiMAX Forum works closely with service providers and regulators to ensure that WiMAX Forum Certified systems meet customer and government requirements."[1] The benifits of WiMAX Forum Certified products will ensure interoperability among devices and networks to ensure service anytime, anywhere at a lower price point. The ultimate goal of the WiMAX Forum is to acceletrate the introduction of cost-effective broadband wireless services into the marketplace. They also can benefit enterprises by bringing new competition into the marketplace and lowering prices, as well as reaching out to locations not served by wireline internet access. This is especially relevant for industries like gas, mining, agriculture, transportation, construction and others that operate in remote locations. Actually, WiMAX Forum plans to have five certification test labs located in the U.S., Europe, China, Korea and Tawan. With three more labs located in India, Japan, and Tawan planned to be opened in 2008, Mobile WiMAX certification will have capacity to support global deployments.
According to products being commercially available, to date, approximately 30 fixed WiMAX products have attained certification. initial certification is based on the 802.16 2004 standard. The new 802.16e standard was approved in 2005 to deliver mobile internet services and mobile WiMAX certification is on track and meeting WiMAX Forum schedules to deliver WiMAX Forum certified products into market. Wireless broadband access systems from WiMAX Forum members are already involved in more than 275 trials and deployments in more than 65 countries around the world. Examples of operators that are trialing or deploying WiMAX technology include BT in UK, France Telecom, Rogers in Canada, Korea Telecom, KDDI in Japan, Telmex in Mexicao, Unwired in Australia, Reliance in India, SingTel in Singapore. SprintNextel and Clearwire joined together to construct the first U.S. mobile broadband network using WiMAX technology, and build the global development of WiMAX based services.
In total, global development and environment are tremendously important for WiMAX technology and 802.16 WiMAX standard. In today's world, broadband access is essential for the economic growth of nations. The Forum believes it is imperative for administrations to take a leadership rolein ensuring that its citizens benefit from the greatest choice of broadband access suppliersand the most cost effective broadband access services & devices. [2]
WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance
Now I would also like to give the abstract introduce of WiSOA. WiSOA is the first global organization composed exclusively of owners of WiMAX spectrum with plans to deploy WiMAX technology in those bands. WiSOA is focussed on the regulation, commercialisation, and deployment of WiMAX spectrum in the 2.3–2.5 GHz and the 3.4–3.5 GHz ranges. WiSOA are dedicated to educating and informing its members, industry representatives and government regulators of the importance of WiMAX spectrum, its use, and the potential for WiMAX to revolutionise broadband. The key objective of the WiSOA is to accelerate the acceptance and deployment of interoperable WiMAX networks through a coordinated global effort. [3] WiSOA strictly represents the needs of those companies and organization that own and operate WiMAX spectrum. its particular focus is on WiMAX networks, most especially on resolving thoses issues related to the definition and implementation of interoperable network infrastructure and services. Specially, WiSOA mainly focus on spectrum issues of WiMAX. WiSOA is intend to assist member who have committed to deploy WiMAX and who are the forefront of the development of this new branch of the telecommunications industry. WiSOA acknowledges that the value of the spectrum is essential to ensuring the unrestricted flow of capital to WiMAX operators.
Once there is a specific association who can pay attention to the spectrum problem, it will be more positive for WiMAX standard progress so that frequencies can be used more effectively and it's better for promotion of global and worldwide wireless network and economic and marketing maturely development.
Of course, WiMAX also have relation with other association such as Wireless Communications Association International (WCA), International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) for some particular details of standards and regulations. However, WiMAX Forum and WiSOA are playing a core and primary role for WiMAX technology and institutional issues for global blueprint.
[1] http://www.wimaxforum.org/
[2] "Regulatory Position and Goals of the WiMAX Forum", White paper of WiMAX Forum, Chair, Regulatory Working Group, Aug. 2004
[3] http://www.wisoa.net/
Thursday, June 26, 2008
3.1. Benefits of Standardization for Wireless Tech.
What is a good standard? What is the wireless standard? Why standards need to be established and released? What are the benefits of standardization for wireless technologies? Which aspects should be concentrated on when setting institutions? Such many questions come out in everybody's mind to the people and organizations who may concern. That's because standard issues are significant for the progress and improvement of wireless technology. Scientific research and technologies update are faster and faster which should be combined with society application and people using. This section will discuss some relevant issues and explain the concerned questions.
Standards no only based on technologies, but also based on how the groups work on institutional establishment, economy, marketing, generalization, services, maintenance, and amendment, etc. Here more attention will be paid to others except technology.
Actually, related information about making a good standard is rarely given in literatures on standardization. This may be because the fact that this problem will change according to standardization ethics so that it depends on many other aspects. Different organizations for different purposes represent their special understanding of a good standard. However, normal properties should apply to a good standard as below [1]:
Entire and reasonable organization structure is tremendously advantaged for standard development. For instance, IEEE 802 LAN/MAN standards committee develops Local Area Network standards and Metropolitan Area Network. IEEE 802.16 group focus on MAN and not only the standard based on IEEE technologically but also be certified by WiMAX Forum, assigned spectrum by WiSOA (WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance), and relate to other liaisons and external organizations such as WCA (Wireless Communications Association International), ITU (International Telecommunication Union), ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), CCSA (China Communications Standards Association), etc. On the other hand, WiMAX standard also combine with other companies including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Cisco, Hutton and so on and service providers such as Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, etc. So that global network supporting for 802.16 (WiMAX) will fully improve the progress of this standard.
Overall, standardization have overwhelming positive performance for technology, service and network of the sophisticated technical application. That's why I am talking about WiMAX standard dimension as my topic in this blog.
References:
[1] Wilfried Hesser, Axel Czaya, Nicole Riemer, "Development of Standards" (Lecture Material of the course)
[2] http://www.wimaxforum.org/
[3] http://www.ieee802.org/16/
Standards no only based on technologies, but also based on how the groups work on institutional establishment, economy, marketing, generalization, services, maintenance, and amendment, etc. Here more attention will be paid to others except technology.
Actually, related information about making a good standard is rarely given in literatures on standardization. This may be because the fact that this problem will change according to standardization ethics so that it depends on many other aspects. Different organizations for different purposes represent their special understanding of a good standard. However, normal properties should apply to a good standard as below [1]:
- The standard meets the needs of the users or the interested parties
- The standard is available to the users in time
- The standard is formulated in a way that is comprehensible and free of contradiction in terms of its scope
- The standard can be implemented by the users
- The standard does not contradict other existing standards. However, this point is open to discussion because occasionally competition supports differing standards. In this way, the better standard is intended to assert itself, and innovation is not obstructed.
- The standard should tend to be more performance-based than prescriptive
- The standard is sufficiently distributed amongst the users and is applied to an adequate extent by all interested parties. A standard that is not applied has no right to exist
- If the development of a standard starts at an early stage, the lower the problem ability will be that economic interests might have already formed among the participnts
Referring to many cases previously and currently, most of them suprisingly fulfill the requirements above. Especially for technical standards, such as wireless standards, they also are similar to the basic concept and situation of the properties of a good standard. Wireless standard based on the wireless technologies, and for the purpose of unifying the application and utilizing technologically, some specialized and professional organizations dedicate to the development of wireless standards such as IEEE 802 group, ETSI, WiMAX Forum and so on.
Economically, there are no doubts that standards have positive economic influences on economic performance. In the complicated word of standards, different types of standards exert their own affects on economic issues. In fact, the interdependence between standards and technical change which is widely agreed among economists as one of the most important economic fundamentals. It has been shown that standards can exert influences on technical change in a complicated situation. Generally speaking, standards are pro-effective for technical changes. Moreover, emphasis is placed on the interrelation between standards and competition which is believed to be the driving force of a market economy. That means the impacts of standards on competitive market structure are influenced by the dynamics and speed of technical change. Standards exert a positive influence on the transactions of goods and services across borders.
The benefits of a standard also can be discussed for some aspects such as equipment vendors, consumers, service providers, component makers especially for wireless standards. Firstly, for equipment vendors, standards-based, common platform fosters rapid innovation and addition of new components and services. They concentrate on specialization. Secondly, consumers receive services in areas that were previously out of the broadband loop, this happen in developing countries with little infrastructure while in developed countries to rural and hard-to-service areas. More players in the market translate into more choices for receiving broadband access services. For service providers, thirdly, common plantform drives down costs, fosters healthy competition and engourages innovations and wireless systems significantly reduce operator investment risk. Last but no least, for component makers, standardization creates a volume opportunities for chip set vendors/silicon suppliers.Entire and reasonable organization structure is tremendously advantaged for standard development. For instance, IEEE 802 LAN/MAN standards committee develops Local Area Network standards and Metropolitan Area Network. IEEE 802.16 group focus on MAN and not only the standard based on IEEE technologically but also be certified by WiMAX Forum, assigned spectrum by WiSOA (WiMAX Spectrum Owners Alliance), and relate to other liaisons and external organizations such as WCA (Wireless Communications Association International), ITU (International Telecommunication Union), ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute), CCSA (China Communications Standards Association), etc. On the other hand, WiMAX standard also combine with other companies including Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Cisco, Hutton and so on and service providers such as Clearwire, Sprint Nextel, etc. So that global network supporting for 802.16 (WiMAX) will fully improve the progress of this standard.
Overall, standardization have overwhelming positive performance for technology, service and network of the sophisticated technical application. That's why I am talking about WiMAX standard dimension as my topic in this blog.
References:
[1] Wilfried Hesser, Axel Czaya, Nicole Riemer, "Development of Standards" (Lecture Material of the course)
[2] http://www.wimaxforum.org/
[3] http://www.ieee802.org/16/
2.3. Comparison of WiMAX, Wi-Fi (mainly) and Others
In the past years, Wi-Fi is the most popular topic in wireless area and this standard and relevant technology had been used widely in practice. Here I will compare WiMAX and Wi-Fi simply. There comparison frequently happens because these two standards both based on IEEE 802 group and with similar names.
Wi-Fi based on IEEE 802.11 which is a set of standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication, developed by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802) in the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz public spectrum bands. Although the terms 802.11 and Wi-Fi are often used interchangeably, the Wi-Fi Alliance uses the term "Wi-Fi" to define a slightly different set of overlapping standards. Actually, the WiMAX Forum is keen to present 802.16 as complementary to the local area IEEE standard, 802.11 or Wi-Fi. However, according to there different applications and characteristics, these two should be used in different concrete situation. Following words will give there comparison in some special aspects.
WiMAX
Spectrum license: uses licensed spectrum typically; it’s also possible to use unlicensed spectrum.
Coverage: Optimized for outdoor non-line of sight; supports mesh networks; supports advanced smart antenna.
Range: long-range system; covers many kilometers; optimized up to 50km; point to multipoint (or multipoint to multipoint); handles many users widely spread out, tolerant of greater multipath delay spread up to 10ms; PHY and MAC designed for multimile range.
QoS: uses a mechanism based on setting up connections between the Base Station and the user device, each connection is based on specific scheduling algorithms which means that QoS parameters can be guaranteed for each flow; grant request MAC; designed to support voice and video from the start; supports differentiated service level; TDD/FDD/HFDD – symmetric or asymmetric; centrally enforced QoS.
Performance: Bandwidth 10/20 MHz, 1.75/3.5/7/14 Hz, 3/6 MHz; maximum data rate 70Mbps; Maximum 5 bps/Hz
Scalability: highly scalable from what are called “femto”-scale remote stations to multi-sector 'maxi' scale base that handle complex task of management and mobile handoff functions and include MIMO-AAS smart antenna susystems; channel bandwidths can be chosen by operator for sectorization; scalable independent of bandwidth with 1.5 MHz to 20 MHz width channels; MAC supports thousands of users.
Wi-Fi
Spectrum license: uses license-exempt (unlicensed) spectrum only to provide access to a network.
Coverage: typically covers only the network operator’s own property, be used by an end user to access their own network which may or may not be connected to the internet; optimized for indoor use; no mesh support within standards; smart antenna support proprietary.
Range: shorter range system, typically hundreds of meters, optimized for 100 meters (now is more than 100m); point to point; No ’near-far’ compensation; designed for indoor multipath delay spread up to 0.8ms; PHY and MAC optimized for 100m range; range can be extended but then MAC non-standard
QoS: introduced a QoS mechanism similar to fixed Ethernet where packets can receive different priorities based on their tags which means that QoS is relative between packets/flows as opposed to guaranteed; contention-based MAC; standard can not guarantee latency for voice or video; no allowance for differentiated levels of service on a per user basis; TDD only-asymmetric.
Performance: bandwidth 20 MHz; maximum data rate 54 Mbps; maximum 2.7 bps/Hz.
Scalability: wide 20 MHz channels; MAC supports tens of users
WiMAX is a serious threat to 3G because of its broadband capabilities, distance capabilities and ability to support voice effectively with full Qos. This makes it an alternative to cellular in a way that Wi-Fi can never be, so that while operators are integrating Wi-Fi into their offerings with some alacrity, looking to control both the licensed spectrum and the unlicensed hotspots, they will have more problems accommodating WiMAX. But as with Wi-Fi, it will be better for them to cannibalize their own network than let independents do it for them, especially as economics and performance demands force them to incorporate IP into their systems. Handset makers such as Nokia will be banking on this as they develop smartphones that support WiMAX as well as 3G. A standards-based long distance technology will avoid many of the problems of high upfront costs, lack of roaming and unreliability that those ahead of their time pioneers encountered, but it will still need to gain market share rapidly before 3G takes an unassailable hold. Given the current slow progress of 3G, especially in Europe, and the unusually streamlined process of commercialising WiMAX, the carriers are indulging in wishful thinking when they say nothing can catch up with cellular.
Due to the ease and low cost with which Wi-Fi can be deployed, it is sometimes used to provide Internet access to third parties within a single room or building available to the provider, often informally, and sometimes as part of a business relationship. For example, many coffee shops, hotels, and transportation hubs contain Wi-Fi access points providing access to the Internet for customers.
Although we just focus on the comparison between WiMAX and Wi-Fi because the comparison of these two is most considerable, we can also connect WiMAX (802.16) with other standards such as 802.15 (Bluetooth), 802.20 WAN, RFID, etc. The figure (source: [1]) below indicates the comparison and relationship of these standards.
Wi-Fi based on IEEE 802.11 which is a set of standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication, developed by the IEEE LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802) in the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz public spectrum bands. Although the terms 802.11 and Wi-Fi are often used interchangeably, the Wi-Fi Alliance uses the term "Wi-Fi" to define a slightly different set of overlapping standards. Actually, the WiMAX Forum is keen to present 802.16 as complementary to the local area IEEE standard, 802.11 or Wi-Fi. However, according to there different applications and characteristics, these two should be used in different concrete situation. Following words will give there comparison in some special aspects.
WiMAX
Spectrum license: uses licensed spectrum typically; it’s also possible to use unlicensed spectrum.
Coverage: Optimized for outdoor non-line of sight; supports mesh networks; supports advanced smart antenna.
Range: long-range system; covers many kilometers; optimized up to 50km; point to multipoint (or multipoint to multipoint); handles many users widely spread out, tolerant of greater multipath delay spread up to 10ms; PHY and MAC designed for multimile range.
QoS: uses a mechanism based on setting up connections between the Base Station and the user device, each connection is based on specific scheduling algorithms which means that QoS parameters can be guaranteed for each flow; grant request MAC; designed to support voice and video from the start; supports differentiated service level; TDD/FDD/HFDD – symmetric or asymmetric; centrally enforced QoS.
Performance: Bandwidth 10/20 MHz, 1.75/3.5/7/14 Hz, 3/6 MHz; maximum data rate 70Mbps; Maximum 5 bps/Hz
Scalability: highly scalable from what are called “femto”-scale remote stations to multi-sector 'maxi' scale base that handle complex task of management and mobile handoff functions and include MIMO-AAS smart antenna susystems; channel bandwidths can be chosen by operator for sectorization; scalable independent of bandwidth with 1.5 MHz to 20 MHz width channels; MAC supports thousands of users.
Wi-Fi
Spectrum license: uses license-exempt (unlicensed) spectrum only to provide access to a network.
Coverage: typically covers only the network operator’s own property, be used by an end user to access their own network which may or may not be connected to the internet; optimized for indoor use; no mesh support within standards; smart antenna support proprietary.
Range: shorter range system, typically hundreds of meters, optimized for 100 meters (now is more than 100m); point to point; No ’near-far’ compensation; designed for indoor multipath delay spread up to 0.8ms; PHY and MAC optimized for 100m range; range can be extended but then MAC non-standard
QoS: introduced a QoS mechanism similar to fixed Ethernet where packets can receive different priorities based on their tags which means that QoS is relative between packets/flows as opposed to guaranteed; contention-based MAC; standard can not guarantee latency for voice or video; no allowance for differentiated levels of service on a per user basis; TDD only-asymmetric.
Performance: bandwidth 20 MHz; maximum data rate 54 Mbps; maximum 2.7 bps/Hz.
Scalability: wide 20 MHz channels; MAC supports tens of users
WiMAX is a serious threat to 3G because of its broadband capabilities, distance capabilities and ability to support voice effectively with full Qos. This makes it an alternative to cellular in a way that Wi-Fi can never be, so that while operators are integrating Wi-Fi into their offerings with some alacrity, looking to control both the licensed spectrum and the unlicensed hotspots, they will have more problems accommodating WiMAX. But as with Wi-Fi, it will be better for them to cannibalize their own network than let independents do it for them, especially as economics and performance demands force them to incorporate IP into their systems. Handset makers such as Nokia will be banking on this as they develop smartphones that support WiMAX as well as 3G. A standards-based long distance technology will avoid many of the problems of high upfront costs, lack of roaming and unreliability that those ahead of their time pioneers encountered, but it will still need to gain market share rapidly before 3G takes an unassailable hold. Given the current slow progress of 3G, especially in Europe, and the unusually streamlined process of commercialising WiMAX, the carriers are indulging in wishful thinking when they say nothing can catch up with cellular.
Due to the ease and low cost with which Wi-Fi can be deployed, it is sometimes used to provide Internet access to third parties within a single room or building available to the provider, often informally, and sometimes as part of a business relationship. For example, many coffee shops, hotels, and transportation hubs contain Wi-Fi access points providing access to the Internet for customers.
Although we just focus on the comparison between WiMAX and Wi-Fi because the comparison of these two is most considerable, we can also connect WiMAX (802.16) with other standards such as 802.15 (Bluetooth), 802.20 WAN, RFID, etc. The figure (source: [1]) below indicates the comparison and relationship of these standards.
The first figure above shows the two directions of PAN to WAN, ETSI HiperMAN is a competing standards to WiMAX and details of such these kinds of competing standards will be discuss combine with WiMAX in the next section of blog.
References:
[1] Dr. Mohammad Shakouri, "The Impact of 802.16 Technology Will Enable Ubiquitous Delivery of Broadband Wireless Services", WiMAX Forum.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
2.2. Fundamental Technical Specifications of WiMAX
Technical specifications of WiMAX will be introduced in this section. WiMAX is Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access which based on IEEE 802.16 standard. Firstly, I will go indepth to the fundamental technologies of WiMAX; secondly, frequency selection is interesting to be focused on; thirdly related techniques of required bandwith practically is going to be indicated; then, spectrum theme for WiMAX about increasing capacity and service demand will be shown and technical improvements or addings in the standards will be mentioned; finally, a typical WiMAX network configuration will be illustrated.
Fundamental Technologies
This part is specially for the fundamental technologies of WiMAX. As we know, 802.16 operates at up to 124Mbps in the 28MHz channel (in 10-66GHz), 802.16a at 70Mbps in lower frequency, 2-11GHz spectrum. It will specify two flavors of OFDM systems: one simply identified as OFDM, the other OFDMA.
OFDM
Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) is a technology that transmits multiple signals simultaneously over a single transmission path, such as a cable or wireless system. Each signal travels within its own unique frequency range (carrier), which is modulated by the data (text, voice, video, etc.). Orthogonal FDM's (OFDM) spread spectrum technique distributes the data over a large number of carriers that are spaced apart at precise frequencies. This spacing provides the "orthogonality" in this technique which prevents the demodulators from seeing frequencies other than their own. The benefits of OFDM are high spectral efficiency, resiliency to RF interference, and lower multi-path distortion. This is useful because in a typical terrestrial broadcasting scenario there are multipath-channels.
OFDM has been recently recognized as an excellent method for high speed bi-directional wireless data communication. Its history dates back to the 1960s, but it has recently become popular because economical integrated circuits that can perform the high speed digital operations necessary have become available. OFDM effectively squeezes multiple modulated carriers tightly together, reducing the required bandwidth but keeping the modulated signals orthogonal so they do not interfere with each other. Today, the technology is used in such systems as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) as well as wireless systems such as IEEE 802.11a/g (64 subcarriers) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX). In OFDM we have 256 sub-carriers with 192 data sub-carriers, 8 pilot sub-carriers and 56 nulls. In its most basic form, each data sub-carrier could be on or off to indicate a one or zero bit of information. However, either phase shift keying (PSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is typically employed to increase the data throughput. So in this case, a data stream would be split into n (192) parallel data streams, each at 1/n (1/192) of the original rate. Each stream is then mapped to the individual data sub-carrier and modulated using either PSK or QAM. Pilot subcarriers provide a reference to minimize frequency and phase shifts during the transmission while null carriers allow for guard bands and the DC carrier (center frequency).All subcarriers are sent at the same time. Actually, 802.16a has three PHY options: an OFDM with 256 sub-carriers – the only option supported in Europe by the ETSI, whose rival HiperMAN standard is likely to be subsumed into WiMAX; OFDMA, with 2048 sub-carriers; and a single carrier option for vendors that think they can beat multipath problems in this mode. OFDM will almost certainly become dominant in all wireless technologies including cellular and its industry body, the OFDM Forum, is a founder member of WiMAX Forum.
OFDMA
Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) allows some sub-carriers to be assigned to different users. For example, sub-carriers 1, 3 and 7 can be assigned to user 1 and sub-carriers 2, 5 and 9 to user 2. These groups of sub-carriers are known as sub-channels. Scalable OFDMA allows smaller FFT sizes to improve performance (efficiency) for lower bandwidth channels. This applies to IEEE 802.16-2004 which can now reduce the FFT size from 4096 to 128 to handle channel bandwidths ranging from 1.25–20 MHz. This allows sub-carrier spacing to remain constant independent of bandwidth which reduces complexity while also allowing larger FFT for increased performance with wide channels.
A great advantage of OFDM and OFDMA modulation is tolerance to multipath propagation and selective fading. It can overcome its negative influence utilizing parallel, slower bandwidth nature. This has made it not only ideal for such new technologies like WiMAX, but also currently one of the prime technologies being considered for use in future fourth generation (4G) networks.
802.16-2004 was updated by 802.16e-2005 in 2005 and uses scalable orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (SOFDMA) as opposed to the OFDM version with 256 sub-carriers (of which 200 are used) in 802.16d
PHY Layer
Physical layer was defined for a wide range of frequency from 2 up to 66 GHz. In sub-range 10-66 GHz system there is an assumption of Line-Of-Sight propagation. In this scheme single carrier modulation was chosen, because of low complexity of system. Downlink channel is shared among users with TDM signals. Subscriber unit are being allocated individual time slots. Access in uplink is being realized with TDMA. Channel bandwidths are 20 or 25 MHz in USA and 28MHz (Europe). Duplex can be realized with either TDD or FDD scheme. In the 2-11 GHz bands communication can be achieved for licensed and non-licensed bands. The communication is also available in NLOS conditions. The 802.16a Draft3 air interface specification describes three formats: Single Carrier modulation (SC), OFDM with 256 point transform, and OFDMA with 2048 point transform. The Forward Error Correction (FEC) is used with Reed-Salomon Codes GF(256). It is also paried inner block convolutional code to robustly transmit critical data, like Frame Control or Initial Access.
MIMO
More advanced versions, including 802.16e, also bring Multiple Antenna Support through Multiple-input multiple-output communications (MIMO), referring to WiMAX MIMO. This brings potential benefits in terms of coverage, self installation, power consumption, frequency re-use and bandwidth efficiency. 802.16e also adds a capability for full mobility support. The WiMAX certification allows vendors with 802.16d products to sell their equipment as WiMAX certified, thus ensuring a level of interoperability with other certified products, as long as they fit the same profile.
Dynamic Frequency Selection in Unlicensed Spectrum
Mesh
Mesh Mode is an optional topology for subscriber-to-subscriber communication in non-line of sight 802.16a. It is included in the standard to allow overlapping, ad hoc networks in the unlicensed spectrum and extend the edges of the WMAN’s range at low cost. Mesh support has recently been extended into the licensed bands too. Although it has highly complex topology and messaging, mesh is a good alternative to the usual NLOS, as it scales well and addresses license exempt interference. It allows a community to be densely seeded with WiMAX connections at low cost, with robust communications as there are multiple paths for traffic to take
Spectral efficiency
Spectrum efficiency measures the maximum total amount of data that can be carriedby a cell per unit of time, normalized with the occupied system bandwidth. For anygiven traffic load per user, spectral efficiency can be used to determine the numberof users a cell can support. For example, 802.16-2004 (fixed) has a spectral efficiency of 3.7 (bit/s)/Hertz, and other 3.5–4G wireless systems offer spectral efficiencies that are similar to within a few tenths of a percent. The notable advantage of WiMAX comes from combining SOFDMA with smart antenna technologies. This multiplies the effective spectral efficiency through multiple reuse and smart network deployment topologies. The direct use of frequency domain organization simplifies designs using MIMO-AAS compared to CDMA/WCDMA methods, resulting in more-effective systems
Protocol independent core
WiMAX can transport IPv4, IPv6, Ethernet or ATM and others, supporting multiple services simultaneously and with quality of service.
Bandwidth on Demand
Bandwidth is significant aspect in WiMAX. Related consideration such as Quality of Service, adaptive modulation, and duplexing, etc. are need to be taken into account.
QoS
The ‘b’ extension to 802.16 is concerned with quality of service (QoS), which enables NLOS operation without severe distortion of the signal from buildings, weather and vehicles. It also supports intelligent prioritization of different forms of traffic according to its urgency. Mechanisms in the Wireless MAN MAC provide for differentiated QoS to support the different needs of different applications. For instance, voice and video require low latency but tolerate some error rate, while most data applications must be error-free, but can cope with latency. The standard accommodates these different transmissions by using appropriate features in the MAC layer, which is more efficient than doing so in layers of control overlaid on the MAC. Later amendments such as 802.16-2004, 802.16e are also based on this scheme.
Adaptive Modulation
Many systems in the past decade have involved fixed modulation, offering a trade-off between higher order modulation for high data rates, but requiring optimal links, or more robust lower orders that will only operate at low data rates. 802.16a supports adaptive modulation, balancing different data rates and link quality and adjusting the modulation method almost instantaneously for optimum data transfer and to make most efficient use of bandwidth.
FDD and TDD
The standard also supports both frequency and time division duplexing (FDD and TDD) to enable interoperability with cellular and other wireless systems. FDD, the legacy duplexing method, has been widely deployed in cellular telephony. It requires two channel pairs, one for transmission and one for reception, with some frequency separation between them to mitigate self-interference. In regulatory environments where structured channel pairs do not exist, TDD uses a single channel for both upstream and downstream transmissions, dynamically allocating bandwidth depending on traffic requirements.
Future Spectrum for WiMAX – More Room and Service Options
Additional bands are being considered today by different regions around the world for the deployment of WiMAX and other similar broadband wireless access services. In Japan the 5.47GHz – 5.725GHz band is being considered for future use. The North American market is indicating some interest in deploying WiMAX in the 4.9GHz broad-spectrum public safety band. There is even some interest in using lower frequency bands such as the licensed 800MHz and he unlicensed 915MHz ISM bands for WiMAX and similar types of services and deployments. The WiMAX standard is set to bring the long-awaited spectral efficiency and throughput to meet users’ needs for combined mobility, voice services and high data rates. It will enable access for more users due to its non-line-of-sight capability, lower deployment costs, wide range capability and penetration into the mass consumer market with lower CPE costs as a result of standardization and interoperability. Since October 2007, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R) has decided to include WiMAX technology in the IMT-2000 set of standards. This enables spectrum owners (specifically in the 2.5-2.69 GHz band at this stage) to use Mobile WiMAX equipment in any country that recognizes the IMT-2000.
Technical Improvement & Development of Standards
The current WiMAX incarnation, Mobile WiMAX, is based upon IEEE Std 802.16e-2005, approved in December 2005. It is a supplement to the IEEE Std 802.16-2004, and so the actual standard is 802.16-2004 as amended by 802.16e-2005 — the specifications need to be read together to understand them.
IEEE Std 802.16-2004 addresses only fixed systems. It replaced IEEE Standards 802.16-2001, 802.16c-2002, and 802.16a-2003.
IEEE 802.16e-2005 improves upon IEEE 802.16-2004 by [2]:
- Adding support for mobility (soft and hard handover between base stations). This is seen as one of the most important aspects of 802.16e-2005, and is the very basis of 'Mobile WiMAX'.
- Scaling of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the channel bandwidth in order to keep the carrier spacing constant across different channel bandwidths (typically 1.25 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz or 20 MHz). Constant carrier spacing results in a higher spectrum efficiency in wide channels, and a cost reduction in narrow channels. Also known as Scalable OFDMA (SOFDMA). Other bands not multiples of 1.25 MHz are defined in the standard, but because the allowed FFT subcarrier numbers are only 128, 512, 1024 and 2048, other frequency bands will not have exactly the same carrier spacing, which might not be optimal for implementations.
- Improving NLOS coverage by utilizing advanced antenna diversity schemes, and hybrid-Automatic Retransmission Request (HARQ).
- Improving capacity and coverage by introducing Adaptive Antenna Systems (AAS) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology
- Increasing system gain by use of denser sub-channelization, thereby improving indoor penetration
- Introducing high-performance coding techniques such as Turbo Coding and Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC), enhancing security and NLOS performance
- Introducing downlink sub-channelization, allowing administrators to trade coverage for capacity or vice versa
- Enhanced Fast Fourier Transform algorithm can tolerate larger delay spreads, increasing resistance to multipath interference
- Adding an extra QoS class (enhanced real-time Polling Service) more appropriate for VoIP applications.
802.16d vendors point out that fixed WiMAX offers the benefit of available commercial products and implementations optimized for fixed access. It is a popular standard among alternative service providers and operators in developing areas due to its low cost of deployment and advanced performance in a fixed environment. Fixed WiMAX is also seen as a potential standard for backhaul of wireless base stations such as cellular, Wi-Fi or even Mobile WiMAX. SOFDMA (used in 802.16e-2005) and OFDM256 (802.16d) are not compatible so most equipment will have to be replaced if an operator wants or needs to move to the later standard. However, some manufacturers are planning to provide a migration path for older equipment to SOFDMA compatibility which would ease the transition for those networks which have already made the OFDM256 investment. Intel provides a dual-mode 802.16-2004 802.16-2005 chipset for subscriber units. This affects a relatively small number users and operators.
Typical WiMAX Network Configuration
The figure (Source:[3]) above shows a typical WiMAX network congiguration solution. Where SS is subscriber station; CPE is Customer premises equipment such as router; MS and BS are Mobile station and base station respectively; ASN is access service network; CSN, obviously, is connectivity service network; AAA is authentication, authorization and accounting entity; HA is home agent; and DHCP is dynamic host control protocol.This typical structure is basd on Fujitsu WiMAX solution of Japan.
Overall, this section mainly focuses on the technology details of WiMAX. With the technologies improvements and development, the standards will also be amended based on the core techniques. In the coming section, I would like to show the relationship with other wireless technologies.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
[3] http://www.fujitsu.com/img/TELCOM/wireless/wimax/wimax_network.jpg
Fundamental Technologies
This part is specially for the fundamental technologies of WiMAX. As we know, 802.16 operates at up to 124Mbps in the 28MHz channel (in 10-66GHz), 802.16a at 70Mbps in lower frequency, 2-11GHz spectrum. It will specify two flavors of OFDM systems: one simply identified as OFDM, the other OFDMA.
OFDM
Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) is a technology that transmits multiple signals simultaneously over a single transmission path, such as a cable or wireless system. Each signal travels within its own unique frequency range (carrier), which is modulated by the data (text, voice, video, etc.). Orthogonal FDM's (OFDM) spread spectrum technique distributes the data over a large number of carriers that are spaced apart at precise frequencies. This spacing provides the "orthogonality" in this technique which prevents the demodulators from seeing frequencies other than their own. The benefits of OFDM are high spectral efficiency, resiliency to RF interference, and lower multi-path distortion. This is useful because in a typical terrestrial broadcasting scenario there are multipath-channels.
OFDM has been recently recognized as an excellent method for high speed bi-directional wireless data communication. Its history dates back to the 1960s, but it has recently become popular because economical integrated circuits that can perform the high speed digital operations necessary have become available. OFDM effectively squeezes multiple modulated carriers tightly together, reducing the required bandwidth but keeping the modulated signals orthogonal so they do not interfere with each other. Today, the technology is used in such systems as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) as well as wireless systems such as IEEE 802.11a/g (64 subcarriers) and IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX). In OFDM we have 256 sub-carriers with 192 data sub-carriers, 8 pilot sub-carriers and 56 nulls. In its most basic form, each data sub-carrier could be on or off to indicate a one or zero bit of information. However, either phase shift keying (PSK) or quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is typically employed to increase the data throughput. So in this case, a data stream would be split into n (192) parallel data streams, each at 1/n (1/192) of the original rate. Each stream is then mapped to the individual data sub-carrier and modulated using either PSK or QAM. Pilot subcarriers provide a reference to minimize frequency and phase shifts during the transmission while null carriers allow for guard bands and the DC carrier (center frequency).All subcarriers are sent at the same time. Actually, 802.16a has three PHY options: an OFDM with 256 sub-carriers – the only option supported in Europe by the ETSI, whose rival HiperMAN standard is likely to be subsumed into WiMAX; OFDMA, with 2048 sub-carriers; and a single carrier option for vendors that think they can beat multipath problems in this mode. OFDM will almost certainly become dominant in all wireless technologies including cellular and its industry body, the OFDM Forum, is a founder member of WiMAX Forum.
OFDMA
Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) allows some sub-carriers to be assigned to different users. For example, sub-carriers 1, 3 and 7 can be assigned to user 1 and sub-carriers 2, 5 and 9 to user 2. These groups of sub-carriers are known as sub-channels. Scalable OFDMA allows smaller FFT sizes to improve performance (efficiency) for lower bandwidth channels. This applies to IEEE 802.16-2004 which can now reduce the FFT size from 4096 to 128 to handle channel bandwidths ranging from 1.25–20 MHz. This allows sub-carrier spacing to remain constant independent of bandwidth which reduces complexity while also allowing larger FFT for increased performance with wide channels.
A great advantage of OFDM and OFDMA modulation is tolerance to multipath propagation and selective fading. It can overcome its negative influence utilizing parallel, slower bandwidth nature. This has made it not only ideal for such new technologies like WiMAX, but also currently one of the prime technologies being considered for use in future fourth generation (4G) networks.
802.16-2004 was updated by 802.16e-2005 in 2005 and uses scalable orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (SOFDMA) as opposed to the OFDM version with 256 sub-carriers (of which 200 are used) in 802.16d
PHY Layer
Physical layer was defined for a wide range of frequency from 2 up to 66 GHz. In sub-range 10-66 GHz system there is an assumption of Line-Of-Sight propagation. In this scheme single carrier modulation was chosen, because of low complexity of system. Downlink channel is shared among users with TDM signals. Subscriber unit are being allocated individual time slots. Access in uplink is being realized with TDMA. Channel bandwidths are 20 or 25 MHz in USA and 28MHz (Europe). Duplex can be realized with either TDD or FDD scheme. In the 2-11 GHz bands communication can be achieved for licensed and non-licensed bands. The communication is also available in NLOS conditions. The 802.16a Draft3 air interface specification describes three formats: Single Carrier modulation (SC), OFDM with 256 point transform, and OFDMA with 2048 point transform. The Forward Error Correction (FEC) is used with Reed-Salomon Codes GF(256). It is also paried inner block convolutional code to robustly transmit critical data, like Frame Control or Initial Access.
MIMO
More advanced versions, including 802.16e, also bring Multiple Antenna Support through Multiple-input multiple-output communications (MIMO), referring to WiMAX MIMO. This brings potential benefits in terms of coverage, self installation, power consumption, frequency re-use and bandwidth efficiency. 802.16e also adds a capability for full mobility support. The WiMAX certification allows vendors with 802.16d products to sell their equipment as WiMAX certified, thus ensuring a level of interoperability with other certified products, as long as they fit the same profile.
Dynamic Frequency Selection in Unlicensed Spectrum
Mesh
Mesh Mode is an optional topology for subscriber-to-subscriber communication in non-line of sight 802.16a. It is included in the standard to allow overlapping, ad hoc networks in the unlicensed spectrum and extend the edges of the WMAN’s range at low cost. Mesh support has recently been extended into the licensed bands too. Although it has highly complex topology and messaging, mesh is a good alternative to the usual NLOS, as it scales well and addresses license exempt interference. It allows a community to be densely seeded with WiMAX connections at low cost, with robust communications as there are multiple paths for traffic to take
Spectral efficiency
Spectrum efficiency measures the maximum total amount of data that can be carriedby a cell per unit of time, normalized with the occupied system bandwidth. For anygiven traffic load per user, spectral efficiency can be used to determine the numberof users a cell can support. For example, 802.16-2004 (fixed) has a spectral efficiency of 3.7 (bit/s)/Hertz, and other 3.5–4G wireless systems offer spectral efficiencies that are similar to within a few tenths of a percent. The notable advantage of WiMAX comes from combining SOFDMA with smart antenna technologies. This multiplies the effective spectral efficiency through multiple reuse and smart network deployment topologies. The direct use of frequency domain organization simplifies designs using MIMO-AAS compared to CDMA/WCDMA methods, resulting in more-effective systems
Protocol independent core
WiMAX can transport IPv4, IPv6, Ethernet or ATM and others, supporting multiple services simultaneously and with quality of service.
Bandwidth on Demand
Bandwidth is significant aspect in WiMAX. Related consideration such as Quality of Service, adaptive modulation, and duplexing, etc. are need to be taken into account.
QoS
The ‘b’ extension to 802.16 is concerned with quality of service (QoS), which enables NLOS operation without severe distortion of the signal from buildings, weather and vehicles. It also supports intelligent prioritization of different forms of traffic according to its urgency. Mechanisms in the Wireless MAN MAC provide for differentiated QoS to support the different needs of different applications. For instance, voice and video require low latency but tolerate some error rate, while most data applications must be error-free, but can cope with latency. The standard accommodates these different transmissions by using appropriate features in the MAC layer, which is more efficient than doing so in layers of control overlaid on the MAC. Later amendments such as 802.16-2004, 802.16e are also based on this scheme.
Adaptive Modulation
Many systems in the past decade have involved fixed modulation, offering a trade-off between higher order modulation for high data rates, but requiring optimal links, or more robust lower orders that will only operate at low data rates. 802.16a supports adaptive modulation, balancing different data rates and link quality and adjusting the modulation method almost instantaneously for optimum data transfer and to make most efficient use of bandwidth.
FDD and TDD
The standard also supports both frequency and time division duplexing (FDD and TDD) to enable interoperability with cellular and other wireless systems. FDD, the legacy duplexing method, has been widely deployed in cellular telephony. It requires two channel pairs, one for transmission and one for reception, with some frequency separation between them to mitigate self-interference. In regulatory environments where structured channel pairs do not exist, TDD uses a single channel for both upstream and downstream transmissions, dynamically allocating bandwidth depending on traffic requirements.
Future Spectrum for WiMAX – More Room and Service Options
Additional bands are being considered today by different regions around the world for the deployment of WiMAX and other similar broadband wireless access services. In Japan the 5.47GHz – 5.725GHz band is being considered for future use. The North American market is indicating some interest in deploying WiMAX in the 4.9GHz broad-spectrum public safety band. There is even some interest in using lower frequency bands such as the licensed 800MHz and he unlicensed 915MHz ISM bands for WiMAX and similar types of services and deployments. The WiMAX standard is set to bring the long-awaited spectral efficiency and throughput to meet users’ needs for combined mobility, voice services and high data rates. It will enable access for more users due to its non-line-of-sight capability, lower deployment costs, wide range capability and penetration into the mass consumer market with lower CPE costs as a result of standardization and interoperability. Since October 2007, the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-R) has decided to include WiMAX technology in the IMT-2000 set of standards. This enables spectrum owners (specifically in the 2.5-2.69 GHz band at this stage) to use Mobile WiMAX equipment in any country that recognizes the IMT-2000.
Technical Improvement & Development of Standards
The current WiMAX incarnation, Mobile WiMAX, is based upon IEEE Std 802.16e-2005, approved in December 2005. It is a supplement to the IEEE Std 802.16-2004, and so the actual standard is 802.16-2004 as amended by 802.16e-2005 — the specifications need to be read together to understand them.
IEEE Std 802.16-2004 addresses only fixed systems. It replaced IEEE Standards 802.16-2001, 802.16c-2002, and 802.16a-2003.
IEEE 802.16e-2005 improves upon IEEE 802.16-2004 by [2]:
- Adding support for mobility (soft and hard handover between base stations). This is seen as one of the most important aspects of 802.16e-2005, and is the very basis of 'Mobile WiMAX'.
- Scaling of the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to the channel bandwidth in order to keep the carrier spacing constant across different channel bandwidths (typically 1.25 MHz, 5 MHz, 10 MHz or 20 MHz). Constant carrier spacing results in a higher spectrum efficiency in wide channels, and a cost reduction in narrow channels. Also known as Scalable OFDMA (SOFDMA). Other bands not multiples of 1.25 MHz are defined in the standard, but because the allowed FFT subcarrier numbers are only 128, 512, 1024 and 2048, other frequency bands will not have exactly the same carrier spacing, which might not be optimal for implementations.
- Improving NLOS coverage by utilizing advanced antenna diversity schemes, and hybrid-Automatic Retransmission Request (HARQ).
- Improving capacity and coverage by introducing Adaptive Antenna Systems (AAS) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology
- Increasing system gain by use of denser sub-channelization, thereby improving indoor penetration
- Introducing high-performance coding techniques such as Turbo Coding and Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC), enhancing security and NLOS performance
- Introducing downlink sub-channelization, allowing administrators to trade coverage for capacity or vice versa
- Enhanced Fast Fourier Transform algorithm can tolerate larger delay spreads, increasing resistance to multipath interference
- Adding an extra QoS class (enhanced real-time Polling Service) more appropriate for VoIP applications.
802.16d vendors point out that fixed WiMAX offers the benefit of available commercial products and implementations optimized for fixed access. It is a popular standard among alternative service providers and operators in developing areas due to its low cost of deployment and advanced performance in a fixed environment. Fixed WiMAX is also seen as a potential standard for backhaul of wireless base stations such as cellular, Wi-Fi or even Mobile WiMAX. SOFDMA (used in 802.16e-2005) and OFDM256 (802.16d) are not compatible so most equipment will have to be replaced if an operator wants or needs to move to the later standard. However, some manufacturers are planning to provide a migration path for older equipment to SOFDMA compatibility which would ease the transition for those networks which have already made the OFDM256 investment. Intel provides a dual-mode 802.16-2004 802.16-2005 chipset for subscriber units. This affects a relatively small number users and operators.
Typical WiMAX Network Configuration
The figure (Source:[3]) above shows a typical WiMAX network congiguration solution. Where SS is subscriber station; CPE is Customer premises equipment such as router; MS and BS are Mobile station and base station respectively; ASN is access service network; CSN, obviously, is connectivity service network; AAA is authentication, authorization and accounting entity; HA is home agent; and DHCP is dynamic host control protocol.This typical structure is basd on Fujitsu WiMAX solution of Japan.
Overall, this section mainly focuses on the technology details of WiMAX. With the technologies improvements and development, the standards will also be amended based on the core techniques. In the coming section, I would like to show the relationship with other wireless technologies.
Reference:
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
[3] http://www.fujitsu.com/img/TELCOM/wireless/wimax/wimax_network.jpg
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