WIMAX AND ITS APPLICATIONS

The extraordinary spread of broadband technology in telecommunication networks

is opening a new way in the transfer of contents and digital applications.
Broadband is now a stable technology and it is requested by a high percentage of
the population; broadband connections in the world are expected to reach 200
millions within 2006. The Italian situation, for example, reflects such a trend, with
5,6 millions of broadband connections in June 2005, reaching 19% of the families,
37% of the enterprises and 61% of Public Administration sites.
From the beginning, operators offering wired broadband connections usually
locate their network infrastructures in the areas with the highest density of
population, where the economical engagement for network implementation is more
easily compensated by users’ number. But now it is becoming more urgent to
ensure services also in suburban and rural areas, to satisfy the requirements of
users of those zones and for the governments engagement in the "digital divide"
bridging. In such scenario, wireless broadband access represents today a strategic
opportunity in the communication market. The perspective of a valid and
convenient wireless alternative to traditional wired broadband connections grows
the interest in this new radio technology, in areas where it is already available, as
well as where traditional solutions cannot arrive, for both private users and public
administrations.
A strong engagement of the various national communications administrations is
now in progress, to make available frequency bands suitable for the new
technologies.

WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) is considered today the

most interesting opportunity, able to provide radio coverage distances of almost 50
kilometers and data troughput up to 70 Mbps, and to complete wired network
architectures, ensuring a flexible and cheap solution for the last-mile.
WiMAX is expected to have an explosive growth, as well as the WiFi, but
compared with the Wi-Fi WiMAX provides broadband connections in greater
areas, measured in square kilometers, even with links not in line of sight.
For these reasons WiMAX is a MAN, highlighting that “metropolitan” is referred to
the extension of the areas and not to the density of population. But WiFi and
WiMAX are not competing technologies. While WiMAX can provide high capacity

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Internet access to residences and business seats, WiFi allows the extension of
such connections inside the corporate sites buildings. Therefore WiMAX and Wi-Fi
are complementary technologies, defined to work together and able to ensure the
best connection according to user needs.

The main operators have concentrated their interests and efforts on the future
applications of this new technology. Created in April 2002, the WiMAX Forum is a
no-profit organization that groups companies promoting the broadband access
based on the wireless communication standard, point to multipoint IEEE 802.16 for
Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). WiMAX Forum activities aim to:
• support the standardization process of IEEE 802.16 for MAN
• select and promote some of the WiMAX profiles defined in the 802.16
• certificate the interoperability between WiMAX equipment of different
suppliers
• make WiMAX a universally accepted technology

The interoperability is a very strategic issue, on which equipment cost and volume
of sales will be based. Operators will not be bound to a unique equipment supplier,
as the radio base stations will be able to interact with terminals produced by
different suppliers. Operators can benefit of suppliers’ competition in terms of costs
and innovation.

It is important to underline that WiMAX is not based on new revolutionary

technologies, but on technologies tested and already applied in existing radio
systems. The WiMAX main value is therefore the boost to the standardization.
The work in progress for a fast reinforcement of the WiMAX industry standard is
essential to make this wireless technology a stable, reliable and cost-effective
solution to be applied by millions of users in the last-mile connections.
For such a necessity, the Companies joining the WiMAX Forum cover more than
75% of the whole broadband wireless access sector, and the importance of this
organisation is shown also by the participation of international suppliers of chip
sets, components and services.

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From the normative point of view, at present WiMAX is related to the “d” release of
the standard IEEE 802.16, approved during August 2004, and it supports
broadband wireless “fixed” connections, while the evolution of 802.16e is in
development, focused on the broadband wireless access in mobility. A typical
Metropolitan Area Network architecture is similar to the access part of a mobile
network, with radio base stations located to optimise PMP connections and able to
provide services in a coverage area depending on frequency, transmitted power
and receiver sensitivity.
Typically radio base stations are connected to the backbone network through
optical fiber or microwave PTP link.
The bandwidth for WiMAX equipment can vary from 1,5 to 20 MHz, being able to
support different throughput, from a few hundred kbps for typical residential users
or small offices, or an E1 trunk (2 Mbps) , up to 70 Mbps.
The frequency spectrum is from 2 to the 11 GHz, but the WiMAX Forum is
focusing at first on the 3,5 GHz band.
This flexibility allows to adapt the connectivity to the regulatory situation of
different countries and to the frequency availability of different service providers,
maintaining high performances also for voice and video transmission thanks to the
expected requirements of quality of service.

WiMAX supports three types of physical layers. The mandatory one is the
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with 256 points FFT, the same
specified by the of HiperMAN European ETSI standard.
For comparison, WiFi ensures very reliable wireless connections using the 64
OFDM physical layer (the number preceding the acronym represents the carriers
that is possible to use in the whole modulation diagram)

In the specification activity, security aspects have been considered of the maximum
interest and developed in depth; the mandatory security algorithm is at present the
Data Encryption Standard (DES), but US National Institute of Standards is
evaluating the possibility of applying more complex algorithms .
The effort for the definition of customized levels of quality of service (QoS) is also
considerable, based on technologies able to optimise radio resources availability

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and data throughput, according to the expected user profile, the actual traffic and
the power signal level. Besides the general attention to the quality of service,
WiMAX provides special technologies to improve it, specifically for voice and video
communications; for example, the identification process of each speech burst
allows the radio base station to transmit them with latency time univocally
determinated.

WiMAX standard allows the equipment manufacturers to propose a large set of

products, with different configurations of radio base stations and user equipment
(Customer Premises Equipment – CPE), supporting different types of broadband
wireless connections: metropolitan networks as well as residential urban
connections and small-business, in alternative or substitution of wired connections,
backhaul for radio base stations able to bypass the PSTN or to Internet WiFi hot-
spot, extension to rural areas of broadband services already available in the urban
areas.

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 Metropolitan Area
MOBILE/
SOHO NOMADIC

Home
Hotel
Office Home
Portable
Office Airport
Car Train

Last Mile - Multimedia Access

instead of DSL and optical fiber Continuos Service -
On the move” and “On the Pause”
WiMax BS WiMax BS
BROADBAND
TETRA
OVERLAY Mobile Network BACKHAUL
GSM
Wi-Fi hotspot
UMTS

WiMax BS

Backhaul - instead of wired

connection to the backbone

Increase in multimedia features - WiMax BS

WiMax networks overlay and interoperate with existing networks

Thanks to the standard flexibility, a WiMAX radio base station can be able to
control a small number of user terminals or it can work as a sophisticated
equipment able to manage thousands of customer equipment ensuring all grades
of service. From the hardware point of view, this flexibility entails, for radio base
stations, the use of microprocessor architectures and discrete RF components. In
user equipment this way would be very expensive, but the standardization, the
main strength of WiMAX, is already allowing the implementation of integrated
chipsets, produced on a large scale and able to provide several features, bridging
in this way the main obstacle to the diffusion of proprietary wireless first generation
systems.

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The future market of WiMAX equipment will be characterized by the diffusion of
low cost user equipment, based on chipsets integrating all the requested services.
But the issue of radio base stations and CPEs for special applications will be in
charge of companies able to design and offer complex solutions based on discrete
components hardware.

Companies already involved in WiMAX application areas will take advantage of

various experiences, leading to the introduction of innovative services.
The consolidated skills in areas needing WiMAX technology in a extremely
specialized way, such as civil applications, public administration, public security
and defence, allow Selex Communications to be among the first companies
involved in the large WiMAX experimentation in course in Italy, with the perspective
to employ the new technology for new advanced services: backhaul and last-mile
applications for emergency scenarios, interface towards public safety institutional
networks, mobile applications in transportations (videosurveillance, command and
control systems, passenger information systems), mobile applications in military
and homeland security areas (integration with military and police networks,
evolution to Meshed and Ad –hoc networks).
The implementation of these applications will be modulated in time according to the
standard 802.16 evolution, to ensure reliable solutions based on a standard
destined to become the most popular mean for broadband wireless communication.