Thought some of you may find this "primer" on WiMAX useful.
This is an excerpt from:
http://www.intel.com/ebusiness/pdf/w...tel/80216_wima x.pdf
I don't profess to be an expert. My friend Steve Macke would be a good choice to ask questions of if you have any. You can contact Steve through the Ryze.com business networking community:
http://www.ryze.com/view.php?who=steve4608
Regards,
Michae Lemm
FreedomFire Communications
"Helping Your Business....Do Business
http://ShopForDS.com/?mscprez
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Introduction: the IEEE 802.16 Standard for Broadband Wireless
Many operators and service providers may be unfamiliar with the details of the IEEE 802.16* standard, but this wireless technology is about to revolutionize the broadband wireless access industry. The 802.16 standard, the “Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems,”is also known as the IEEE WirelessMAN* air interface.
This technology is designed from the ground up to provide wireless last-mile broadband access in the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN), delivering performance comparable to traditional cable, DSL, or T1 offerings.
The principal advantages of systems based on 802.16 are multi-fold: the ability to quickly provision service, even in areas that are hard for wired infrastructure to reach; the avoidance of steep installation costs; and the ability to overcome the physical limitations of traditional wired infrastructure. Providing a wired broadband connection to a currently underserved area through cable or DSL can be a time-consuming, expensive process, with the result that a surprisingly large number of areas in the US and throughout the world do not have access to broadband connectivity. 802.16 wireless technology provides a flexible, cost-effective, standards based means of filling existing gaps in broadband coverage, and creating new forms of broadband services not envisioned in a “wired” world.
Drawing on the expertise of hundreds of engineers from the communications industry, the IEEE has established a hierarchy of complementary wireless standards. These include IEEE 802.15 for the Personal Area Network (PAN), IEEE 802.11 for the Local Area Network (LAN), 802.16 for the Metropolitan Area Network, and the proposed IEEE 802.20 for the Wide Area Network (WAN). Each standard represents the optimized technology for a distinct market and usage model and is designed to complement the others.
A good example is the proliferation of home and business wireless LANs and commercial hotspots based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. This proliferation of WLANs is driving the demand for broadband connectivity back to the Internet, which 802.16 can fulfill by providing the outdoor, long range connection back to the service provider. For operators and service providers, systems built upon the 802.16 standard represent an easily deployable “third pipe” capable of delivering flexible and affordable last-mile broadband access for millions of subscribers in homes and businesses throughout the world.
In January 2003, the IEEE approved the 802.16a standard which covers frequency bands between 2 GHz and 11 GHz. This standard is an extension of the IEEE 802.16 standard for 10 – 66 GHz published in April 2002. These sub 11 GHz frequency ranges enable non line-of-sight performance, making the IEEE 802.16a standard the appropriate technology for last-mile applications where obstacles like trees and buildings are often present and where base stations may need to be unobtrusively mounted on the roofs of homes or buildings rather than towers on mountains.
The most common 802.16a configuration consists of a base station mounted on a building or tower that communicates on a point to multi-point basis with subscriber stations located in businesses and homes. 802.16a has up
to 30 miles of range with a typical cell radius of 4 – 6 miles. Within the typical cell radius, non-line-of-sight performance and throughputs are optimal. In addition, 802.16a provides an ideal wireless backhaul technology to connect 802.11 wireless LANs and commercial hotspots with the Internet. 802.16a wireless technology enables businesses to flexibly deploy new 802.11 hotspots in locations where traditional wired connections may be unavailable or time consuming to provision and provides service providers around the globe with a flexible new way to stimulate growth of the residential broadband access market segment.
With shared data rates up to 75 Mbps, a single “sector” of an 802.16a base station – where sector is defined as a single transmit/receive radio pair at the base station –provides sufficient bandwidth to simultaneously support
more than 60 businesses with T1-level connectivity and hundreds of homes with DSL-rate connectivity, using 20 MHz of channel bandwidth. To support a profitable business model, operators and service providers need
to sustain a mix of high-revenue business customers and high-volume residential subscribers. 802.16a helps meet this requirement by supporting differentiated service levels, which can include guaranteed T1-level services for business, or best effort DSL-speed service for home consumers.
The 802.16 specification also includes robust security features and the Quality of Service needed to support services that require low latency, such as voice and video. 802.16 voice service can be either traditional Time Division Multiplexed (TDM) voice or Voice over IP (VoIP).
Wimax Primer FAQ
