Wimax Report

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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard
Research Report
(Part of the BluePrint Wi-Fi subscription package)
WiMAX
Lead Analyst: Caroline Gabriel ARCchart ltd. 3 Finsbury Square London EC2A 1LN UK Tel: +44 207 826 9000 Fax: +44 207 826 9001 Web: www.arcchart.com Email: info@arcchart.com
No part of this publication may be copied, photocopied or duplicated in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the publishers. The information contained in BluePrint Wi-Fi is derived from sources which we believe to be accurate, but is not guaranteed. All 1 rights reserved. Copyright 2003 ARCchart ltd. All Rights Reserved
1. Contents
1. 2. 3. Contents......................................................................................................................... 2 Introduction .................................................................................................................... 4 The 802.16a Standard ................................................................................................... 6 WiMAX Not just another standard ..................................................................................... 6 Markets for WiMAX ............................................................................................................... 6 Business users .................................................................................................................. 6 Last mile to the home ........................................................................................................ 6 Hotspots............................................................................................................................. 7 Remote regions ................................................................................................................. 7 China ................................................................................................................................. 7 Background and 802.16........................................................................................................ 7 Technical specifications of 802.16a..................................................................................... 8 Fundamental technologies in 802.16a .............................................................................. 8 Dynamic frequency selection in unlicensed spectrum...................................................... 9 Bandwidth on demand (frame by frame)......................................................................... 10 WiMAX leadership............................................................................................................... 10 Chip advances..................................................................................................................... 11 HIPERMAN ......................................................................................................................... 11 Operators ............................................................................................................................ 12 The vendors ........................................................................................................................ 13 4. Relationship With Other Wireless Technologies ......................................................... 15 WI-FI.................................................................................................................................... 15 Extended WI-FI ................................................................................................................... 16 Cellular Technologies.......................................................................................................... 17 Handoff project .................................................................................................................... 18 Mobile-Fi.............................................................................................................................. 19 802.20 technology............................................................................................................... 20 Two IEEE camps................................................................................................................. 21 Overlap with WiMAX ........................................................................................................... 22 Hostility from the 3G industry.............................................................................................. 23
BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard Vendor support.................................................................................................................... 24 5. The Last Mile: WiMAX and Broadband Wireless Alternatives .................................... 25 BWA alternatives to WiMAX ............................................................................................... 26 IP and smart antennas ........................................................................................................ 27 6. 7. 8. Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 30 APPENDIX: Wi-Fi and WiMAX Compared .................................................................. 31 APPENDIX: WiMAX Players ....................................................................................... 32
2. Introduction
The past few months have seen a storm of debate about the economics and return on investment of Wi-Fi hotspots. What almost all the arguments entirely ignore is the standard lurking on the horizon, which will turn current assumptions on their head. This is the 802.16x wireless metropolitan area network (WMAN) specification, which is being developed and promoted by the WiMAX industry group, whose most powerful members are Intel and Nokia. As with Wi-Fi, the WiMAX label has now become widely acceptable as a name for the standard itself. Intel has called 802.16 the most important thing since the Internet itself, and even allowing for a dose of self-serving, it is not talking entirely in hyperbole. In July, WiMAX showed off its first system profiles and interoperability tests at the WCA annual conference in Washington DC, in a significant step towards making the 802.16a standard, ratified by the IEEE in March, a commercial technology. While a fully mobile version of WiMAX is in the wings, this first release will cover fixed wireless, and its supporters are focusing in particular on broadband last mile in unwired areas, and on backhaul for hotspots. Intel will start to make WMAN chips this year and we should see WiMAX products early in 2004. These vendors are finally giving broadband wireless the teeth it needs, with a standards base, to take on wired options for the last mile and for long distance networking. The WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) group was actually set up two years ago by Nokia, Ensemble and the OFDM Forum, but gained a new lease of life in April when it was revived by Nokia in collaboration with Intel and added five new members, with nine more joining in May. The non-profit group takes a similar role to the Wi-Fi Alliance in WLANs, backing development of wireless Man products based on 802.16 and working on standards certification and interoperability testing. The initial version of the standard operates in the 10-66GHz frequency band and requires line of sight towers, but the 802.16a extension, ratified in March, uses the lower frequency of 2-11GHz, easing regulatory issues, and does not require line of sight. It boasts a 31 mile range compared to Wi-Fis 200-300 yards, and 70Mbps data transfer rates. WiMAX president Margaret Labrecque says that collaborating on mass market products will achieve similar economies of scale to those seen in Wi-Fi WLAN devices. She says base stations will cost under $20,000 and support 60 enterprise customers with T1-class connections. Systems based on the mobile version of the standard, which should ship towards the end of next year, about six months after fixed wireless products, will be able to achieve long distance wireless networking and will have far greater potential than Wi-Fi hotspots to provide ubiquitous coverage to rival that of the cellular network.
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard There is a plethora of wireless standards emerging in 2003 from the IEEE and IETF, but only WiMAX addresses all the key elements that are needed to make high end wireless a reality, and which existing proprietary last mile and broadband wireless access (BWA) technologies have failed fully to provide a single standard for fixed broadband access and mobility, wireless WLAN backhaul, low cost of deployment, high scalability and the support of vendors with the power to drive the standard forward rapidly. Intel is the foremost among these vendors and it is no coincidence that Labrecque is an Intel employee. As the head of Intels investment arm, Intel Capital, Sriram Viswanathan the most eloquent of WiMAXs supporters says: 802.11 is the first key disruption. 802.16 is the next. In this research paper we examine the significance and potential impact of WiMAX, the obstacles in its path and its technological functions. We also look at how it interoperates and potentially clashes with other wireless standards in the WLAN and cellular markets, and its ability to replace wired systems in last mile and enterprise markets.
3. The 802.16a Standard

WiMAX Not just another standard
Broadband wireless access provides more capacity at lower cost than DSL or cable for extending the fibre networks and supporting multimedia and fast internet applications in the enterprise or home. But it has been held back by the lack of a standard, so that solutions have been based on proprietary, single-vendor efforts. Standardization through the IEEE 802.16 specification raises the potential to: Stall wired broadband and make wireless the key platform of the future Extend the range of Wi-Fi so that the myth of ubiquitous wireless can become a reality Provide an alternative or complement to 3G Provide an economically viable communications infrastructure for developing countries and mobile blackspot regions in developed nations
Markets for WiMAX

The greatest media excitement about WiMAX has centred on its potential mobility and its role as a backhaul or even replacement for public Wi-Fi. However, its initial raison detre and still its primary focus is on broadband fixed wireless access for homes and businesses. This sector is populated by a horde of mainly American niche players with expensive equipment using various versions of smart antennas, OFDM and sometimes mesh to provide often effective alternatives to wired communications. ArrayComm, Alvarion, IPWireless, Navini and Beamreach are high profile names, though the majority of these specialists will refocus their products around WiMAX in the coming year (see later chapter).
Business users
Only 5 percent of commercial structures worldwide are served by fibre networks, the main method for the largest enterprises to access broadband, multimedia data services. In the wired world, these networks are extended to the business or residence via cable or DSL, both expensive options because of the infrastructure changes required. DSL typically operates at 128Kbps to 1.5Mbps and slower on the upstream. Enterprises can use WiMAX instead of T1 for about 10 percent of the cost, while SMEs can be offered fractional T1 services. Base stations will cost under $20,000 and support 60 enterprise customers with T1-class connections.
Last mile to the home

A low cost alternative could end the wars between the cable and ADSL operators and really make the broadband home revolution happen.
Hotspots
Wi-Fi hotspot operators may be able to build a spot for a few thousand dollars worth of equipment, but then they need to anchor it to the public network, and this is normally done with expensive T1 or DSL. WiMAX backhaul could significantly reduce hotspot costs, although there is also the potential for Wi-Fi to be bypassed altogether by WiMAX hotzones.
Remote regions
The most lucrative market for the proprietary BWA vendors has been remote regions, especially in developing countries but also in rural areas of the US, where there is no wired or cellular infrastructure nor the will or cash to invest in building it. The main alternative to BWA in this market is satellite. Still early in its lifecycle and potentially a powerful technology to integrate with WiMAX satellite has severe limitations of upstream bandwidth, spectrum availability and also suffers from high latency.
China
One of the most potentially lucrative markets for remote region BWA is, of course, China, and discussions have been held between the Chinese government and IEEE with a view to making 802.16 the Chinese national standard for fixed broadband wireless access at 3.5GHz. Chinese operators are already rolling out WiMAX base stations even before standard, low cost silicon is ready, and Alvarion recently supplied this type of equipment to China Unicom for a network covering, initially, six cities.
Background and 802.16

Although the 802.16 project started as far back as 1998, the body of work was done in 20002003 in an open consensus process. The aim was to make broadband wireless access more widely and cheaply available through a standard for wireless metropolitan area networks. The overall vision for 802.16 is that carriers would set up base stations connected to a public network. Each base station would support hundreds of fixed subscriber stations, probably mounted on rooftops. The base stations would then use the standard's medium access control layer (MAC) - a common interface that makes the networks interoperable - to nearly instantaneously allocate uplink and downlink bandwidth to subscribers according to their needs. 802.16 MANs could also anchor 802.11 hotspots, which serve as wireless local area networks (LANs), as well as servicing end users directly. With the mobile standard, users will be able to use the WMAN base station to communicate via handsets as they move within the 50 mile range. The first version of the standard, 802.16, was published in April 2002 and addressed fixed, line of sight connections for the first mile/last mile link. It focused on efficient use of various licensed frequencies in the 10-66GHz bandwidth. 802.16 standards have never taken a lowest common denominator approach. Unlike Wi-Fi, few proprietary vendors of equivalent equipment can outdo the performance of WiMAX. It BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 7
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard offers the highest performance broadband , technology except for broadcast and, on the wired side, MMDS, and is on a level with satellite. Although, even with the upcoming mobile version of standard, WiMAX cannot be as wide area as 2G/3G, it delivers far higher rates and, with sufficiently widespread deployment, could significantly cut into the usage of cellular networks in many areas. The next version of the standard, 802.16a, published in April 2003, is the one that has really kick-started WiMAX into being adopted as the dominant wireless broadband technology. This is also for fixed wireless but extends the range of WiMAX from 31 to 50 miles and operates in the low frequency 2-11GHz spectrum and so can be adopted by unlicensed operators. It uses point-to-multipoint or (optionally) mesh topologies and does not require line of sight. Specifically, it uses licensed bands at 3.5GHz and 10.5GHz internationally and 2.5-2.7GHz in the US; and unlicensed 2.4GHz and 5.725-5.825GHz. An important aspect of 802.16x is that it defines a MAC (media access control) layer that supports multiple physical layer (PHY) specifications. This is critical to allow equipment makers to differentiate their offerings for instance with novel approaches to smart antenna use without becoming non-interoperable; and to customize the equipment for the frequency band in use. Next on the agenda are: 802.16c/d, published in Jan 2003, address interoperability by providing detailed system profiles and specifying combinations of options, as the basis for compliance and interoperability tests. The WiMAX Forum presented the first of these tests at the WCA conference in July 2003 and further work will be done by this body and the IEEE throughout this year. The c protocol relates to protocols, test suite structures and test purposes while d fixes errata and protocols not covered in c, and creates the system profiles. 802.16e, which adds mobility to the standard and really throws down the gauntlet to cellular. This element of the standard has the particular interest of Nokia, which can see a new revenue stream at both base station and handset level. The draft will be ready in August or September 2003. Probably, an important new project to enable handoff between Wi-Fi and WiMAX (see page 18).
Technical specifications of 802.16a

802.16 operates at up to 124Mbps in the 28MHz channel (in 10-66GHz), 802.16a at 70Mbps in lower frequency, 2-11GHz spectrum.
Fundamental technologies in 802.16a

OFDM Support for OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), which can continue to be implemented in various ways by different operators (the precise variant of OFDM can often be their key differentiator).
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard OFDM is well established and is incorporated in some new generation carrier services as well as being fundamental to digital TV. It transmits multiple signals simultaneously across one cable or wireless transmission path, within separate frequencies, with the orthogonal element spacing these frequencies to avoid interference. It is also supported in the 802.11a WLAN standard. 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. Support for Smart Antenna Smart antenna mechanisms are one of the most important methods of improving spectral efficiency in non-cellular wireless networks. 802.16 standards allow vendors to support a variety of these mechanisms, which can be a key performance differentiator.
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 WMANs range at low cost. Mesh support has recently been extended into the licensed bands too.
Figure 1 :Mesh networking
Source: Proxicast
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 (see diagram).
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard Spectral efficiency This is critical to support difficult user environments with hundreds of users per channel at high bandwidth and a mixture of continuous and burst traffic. 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 (frame by frame)

Quality of Service 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 prioritisation 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. 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. Security 802.16 also includes measures for privacy and encryption: authentication with x.509 certificates and data encryption using DES in CBC (cipher block chaining) mode with hooks defined for stronger algorithms like AES.
WiMAX leadership
Since the new-look WiMAX Forum was formed in April, the momentum behind 802.16a has gathered force and the standard has progressed with remarkable speed. Strong leadership is vital in the continuing evolution and rapid adoption of WiMAX and will help to set it apart from other mobile standards which are beset by politics. BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 10
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard There are significant names missing from WiMAX so far its initial focus on last mile is indicated by the bias of the membership towards fixed wireless, OFDM specialists (the 802.16 specification is built on an implementation of OFDM from Wi-Lan of Canada), rather than enterprise focused suppliers or mobile carriers. Some major vendors will be taking the usual gamble of trying to establish such market presence for their proprietary solutions as to sideline the industry standard Motorola with its Canopy broadband fixed wireless platform springs to mind. But these companies will join Cisco being a critical target and in the meantime, the really impressive aspect of WiMAX has been its clear focus and unity of purpose. So far, perhaps because of its fairly low numbers, with most of these being smaller companies, it has avoided the complex politics and hidden agendas of most industry bodies though this comes at the cost of a direction that is highly dominated by Intel and Nokia.
Chip advances
The main obstacles to long distance wireless are limitations on battery power and power efficiency. Regulations keep power levels low and the range of Wi-Fi signals short to avoid overcrowding of airwaves. But advances in fast digital signal processors mean that weak, jumbled signals can be deciphered, lengthening the distance that is practical for a transmission, as well as improving distance and speed potential. Battery improvements will also be vital to make a WiMAX cellphone a practicality. Nokia is working on battery and handset chip designs to this end, citing two years as the likely timescale, while Intel is increasingly involved in next generation battery and processing power for mobile devices, including digital radios that can intelligently move to the most efficient available network cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, WiMAX or UWB. Currently, it looks as if Intel will entirely dominate the WiMAX chip market. Fujitsu and STMicroelectronics are also creating silicon but nearly all the next generation developments in radio and wireless processor chips that will be important to fixed and mobile 802.16 are being led by Intel, as is the political agenda.
HIPERMAN
An alternative standard to 802.16a is the European Telecommunication Standards Institutes BRAN HA (Broadband Radio Access Networks HiperAccess) or HiperMAN. This is likely to be subsumed into 802.16a. April, Nokia and Siemens Information and Communication Mobile said they would coordinate an effort to integrate the two standards to achieve a single worldwide standard combining the best of both specifications and provide a migration path from current proprietary products to an IP-optimised solution. ETSI has two specifications, Hiperaccess, which operates above 11GHz, and HiperMAN for below 11GHz, which will be harmonized with 802.16a OFDM. This illustrates the advantage WiMAX has derived from its strong and single minded focus, which has enabled it to largely avoid the political upheavals that have disrupted other efforts such as Wi-Fi and Mobile-Fi. Contrast the political fiasco that scuppered the fast Wi-Fi standard, 802.11a, with the clarity of the 802.16a process. 802.11a had some technological shortcomings, notably its lack of BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 11
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard backward compatibility with 802.11b, but its low uptake compared to the g version was largely because it was continually delayed by wrangling between the IEEE and the European ETSI standards body. ETSIs HiperLan standard and 802.11a use the same frequency and so there was pressure to unify the two, but this was achieved painfully, with a separate implementation of a for Europe, which has further delayed product roll-out and confused users. In contrast, WiMAX has set out from the start to harmonize 802.16 and HiperMan, and the specifications it showcased in July demonstrated that unification. All this with remarkably little political in-fighting the difference between leaving standards bodies to sort out their own futures, and putting a technology in the hands of vendors with a clear commercial objective, and deadline.
Operators
For mobile operators, there is a doubled edged sword. WiMAX is particularly disruptive because no physical last mile installation is required and the base stations will cost under $20,000 using commodity standard hardware. As with Wi-Fi hotspots, fixed and mobile operators will have an equal interest in extending their networks through WiMAX, and also ensuring that any revenues lost to 3G and wired services are at least preserved within the company. But WiMAX also gives the opportunity for small, alternative operators to enter the game. License exempt wireless ISPs will start to offer WiMAX fixed wireless service. There are already about 1,800 such WISPs in the US, many just focused on Wi-Fi but some already eyeing the metro area. Before WiMAX, such operators had to either use Wi-Fi, or turn to proprietary BWA gear to provide features that Wi-FI lacks such as QoS. As the FCC and equivalent authorities in other parts of the world become more friendly to freeing up new spectrum, more broadband WISPs will spring up, especially if the US administration gives into pressure to open up some unused MMDS wireless broadband spectrum.
Figure 2: Worldwide sub-11GHz subscriber base - 802.16a and proprietary
5.0 4.5 MidEast/Africa Asia Europe Americas
Subscribers (millions)
4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0
2003
Source: Intel Capital
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard WiMAX operates in a mixture of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, and the initial products will be focused on 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz licensed and 5.8GHz unlicensed bands (though the full standard supports a far wider range of bands). The licensed spectrum gives operators the chance to apply for franchises for fixed wireless broadband provision, especially in rural and remote areas, and to build the infrastructure with low cost, commodity hardware something Intel is promoting assiduously as a means to increase investment in Centrinoenabled PCs (it now has a director of rural broadband access). The unlicensed aspect means that independents have the chance to provide backhaul services for hotspots, which have the potential to create a nationwide wireless network. If the operators can control this, as they have been trying to do with Wi-Fi, they will be able to offer parallel, integrated services and achieve a stopgap as they struggle towards ubiquitous 3G one with lower margins than cellular perhaps, but swifter ROI on lower upfront investment. They certainly have the power and resource to take control from alternative network suppliers, but they may also be condemning their 3G investments to stillbirth. But the genie is out of the bottle now, and while the operators hesitate, the equipment makers are driving ahead, Intel in the vanguard, and Nokia, which has supported WiMAX from its earliest days, looking forward to the mobile standard and to the chance to add a new form of base station business to its ailing networks unit.
The vendors
Recently, a much publicized article in The Wall Street Journal pointed out how Wi-Fi has already slipped out of the hands of the start-ups. Unlike in other technology booms, none of those start-ups looks set to grow up to be a dominant player; instead, the established giants have sidestepped to take control of the new sector, Intel and Cisco in particular. The same process is likely to happen in WiMAX, certainly at the chip and hardware level. In fact, the main question is whether anybody can stop Intel and Nokia completely dominating this market, blocking entry to everybody else with their aggressive early action. Of course, the availability of low cost equipment will help to make the business models of some of the BWA specialists more viable, and partnership with Intel could ensure the survival of companies such as Alvarion. However, cheap components will also lower barriers to entry and cause a shakeout in which many of the less well funded developers of smart antenna, OFDM systems will perish. Similarly, as WiMAX becomes a mainstream option for last mile and rural BWA, it is likely to attract the attention of large operators looking for new revenue streams and some of the alternative and niche operators may be pushed out too. As well as Intel, the first WiMAX products are likely to come from:
Enterprise WLAN maker Proxim, which has WiMAX equipment in the labs Ensemble Communications Flarion, the Cisco-backed last mile player, which has a trial running in South Korea of wireless broadband gear using its smart antenna technology and supporting 802.16a. Korea is seen as the territory where wireless broadband is adopted most
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard rapidly. However, Flarions chief interest is in the rival 802.20 standard, or Mobile-Fi (see later chapter).
Fujitsu Microelectronics will be first with silicon. It is developing an 802.16a device that integrates the physical and media access control layers, which will include an ARM9 processor and will be ready later this year. The chip will cost about $300. Fujitsu will work with multiple providers of front end devices and recommend those compatible with its device.
Taiwan-based Gen-WAN Technology has launched broadband wireless network equipment using 802.16a, offering base stations, fixed and mobile terminals, repeaters and network management systems. It will market its system, called BWIA, initially for public safety and military purposes, where WiMAX offers more reliable signals than cellular in emergency situations.
Wi-Lan, one of the critical start-ups in WiMAX, has come to market with prestandard system-on-chip solutions and will support the full standard soon. Its patented Wideband OFDM technology is included in the 802.16a standard and it has a manufacturing and development agreement with Fujitsu Microelectronics.
Broadcom and Texas Instruments are also making noises about WiMAX and are expected to get into the market alongside Intel and Fujitsu. This is a sector where the chipmakers will define the core set of capabilities and control the core functions so that they take the primary role in driving proliferation of 802.16.
The first Intel technology partners from the BWA arena, which will use the upcoming Intel products in their previously proprietary base stations, are Alvarion and Aperto Networks. Alvarion has an important contract to supply China Unicom with WiMAX equipment for its initial roll-out in six cities.
AirTap Communications is one of the early entrants into the market for WiMAX networks in the US, serving SMEs and large enterprises in a range of metro districts.
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4. Relationship With Other Wireless Technologies

Figure 3: The mobile standards compared 3G Max speed Coverage Airwave Advantages Disadvantages 2Mbps Several miles Licensed Range, mobility Slow, expensive Wi-Fi: 802.11 54Mbps 300 feet Unlicensed Speed, price Short range WiMAX: 802.16 100Mbps 50 miles Either Speed, range Interference issues? Mobile-Fi: 802.20 16Mbps Several miles Licensed Speed, mobility High price
Wi-Fi
The WiMAX Forum is keen to present 802.16 as complementary to the local area IEEE standard, 802.11 or Wi-Fi. In many ways, this is right802.16a, as we have seen, provides a low cost way to backhaul Wi-Fi hotspots and WLAN points in businesses and homes, and as uptake of Wi-Fi increases, the requirement for this backhaul will grow too. But there is conflict too. WiMAX makes redundant the efforts of Wi-Fi specialists to extend the reach of their favourite technology and also places 802.11 into a far smaller role than its supporters have, often unrealistically, carved out for it. This is the opportunity for wireless technologies finally to grow up and offer the speed, multimedia support and ubiquity that WiFi can never deliver. The newer standard holds all the real power. By providing a backbone for hotspots, based on standards rather than the various proprietary WLAN expansion technologies out there, it makes the idea of a ubiquitous wireless network to rival cellular far more realistic than it ever was with Wi-Fi alone, despite the claims of the enthusiasts. The equipment makers are eyeing it keenly amid all the doubts about the sustainability of the hotspot boom, anything that offers them a new product line plus helps to preserve the interest in Wi-Fi is to be welcomed. 802.16 is a highly complex standard which contains, from day one, many of the features that are being retrofitted, with various degrees of clumsiness and baggage, into Wi-Fi, which was originally conceived to be very simple and is now taking on a burden of responsibility beyond its technological reach. WiMAX has the advantage of not being at least until Intel has a long distance Centrino a consumer technology. Although this has kept its profile lower than Wi-Fis, it has not suffered from the over-hype and its development is freer of vendor politics and posturing than its short distance cousins. We are trying to avoid referring to them by their letter," says 802.16 working group chair Dr Roger Marks. "At the moment we're not really going out to create something that you would sell to consumers. 802.16 is about base stations that connect the core networks as part of BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 15
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard serious investments and it will be a different kind of business, so we don't really need to identify the separate amendments." And while 802.16 was conceived as a back end technology, 802.16e has the capacity to be adapted for individual computers, and has the QoS features to support voice - hence the interest from Intel and its Centrino plans. WiMAX has various features that make it suitable to the longer distance, although some like QoS may be incorporated into 802.11, which has failed to come up with specifications of its own in this area with any credibility. The 802.16a spec uses various physical layer (PHY) variants but the dominant one is a 256-point orthogonal frequency division multiplexed (OFDM) carrier technology, giving it greater range than WLANs, which are based on 64point OFDM. Another key difference of 802.16 is its use of time slots, allowing greater spectral efficiency for quality of service capabilities. Margaret Labrecque, president of WiMAX, said that vendor collaboration on mass market products will achieve similar economies of scale to those seen in Wi-Fi WLAN devices, and a far lower cost alternative to wired broadband, or T1 circuits in enterprise sites. Systems based on the mobile version of the standard, which should ship towards the end of next year, about six months after fixed wireless products, will be able to achieve long distance wireless networking and will have far greater potential than Wi-Fi hotspots to provide ubiquitous coverage to rival that of the cellular network. Whether used directly or as backhaul for Wi-Fi, WiMAX fills the gaps in the hotspot system, and possibly enables it to challenge the cellular network as it cannot realistically do right now, whatever the hype says. See the appendix for a full comparison of Wi-Fi and WiMAX.
Extended Wi-Fi
Some companies are still sticking with Wi-Fi rather than WiMAX as a metro area wireless standard. There are various approaches to extending Wi-Fis range and capacity, but all are based on proprietary extensions. Their supporters take the view that they can offer a solution now, particularly to the enterprise, but with the speed of development of WiMAX, this argument will not hold weight for very long. There are many vendors that aim to work around Wi-Fis distance and capacity limitations and its weaknesses when operating in a point-to-multipoint or mesh mode required to compete with broadband wireless access solutions. There is even likely to be an IEEE activity to create a standard for a meshing version of 802.11x. In theory, this could really shake up the hotspot infrastructure market, although all the arguments in favour of mutant Wi-Fi centre on its availability now, giving operators a quick solution especially should WiMAX get delayed. But a mesh Wi-Fi standard will certainly take longer than WiMAX to hit the streets, especially if it fails to get a major vendor behind it. Of the currently available solutions to extended Wi-Fi, Vivato is the most high profile. Although it has focused mainly on the enterprise with its wireless switching products, it has recently targeted operators with a 2.4GHz outdoor switch that boosts Wi-Fi using smart
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard antennas and proprietary enhancement technology to operate over WiMAX-class distances, around 50km, though only at Wi-Fi speeds and in point-to-point mode. Some small operators are taking the Wi-Fi route too, in an effort to deploy fixed wireless rapidly. Broadband Central is accelerating its roadmap to offer broadband fixed wireless via 802.11x, expanding from its original 11 states to a further 11. The company sets up central Wi-Fi broadcast access point masts that give a one mile radius of Wi-Fi, and then set up customer locations with an antenna. Other Wi-Fi extenders take the approach of fiddling with the media access control layer rather than directing beams in a more efficient way, Vivatos approach and that of many BWA specialists too. Some of these have got prices down to less than initial WiMAX equipment is likely to be, around $300 per subscriber (though WiMAX, starting around $500, is sure to drop to this level rapidly). However, given that these are proprietary technologies from start-ups and still have some limitations compared to WiMAX, it seems unlikely that many operators will choose them rather than waiting 6-9 months for 802.16. The most constructive approach is that Wi-Fi and WiMAX are strongest when working together however. Some mobile operators are looking at offering a single PCMCIA card for roaming between 802.11 and broadband services Walker Wireless of New Zealand will offer one for IPWireless, but the big device makers will be developing cards for WiFi/WiMAX, and of course, the debut of an Intel roaming card in the Centrino range will revolutionize the roaming hotspot users experience. In the end, the technologies will coexist in a creative way, with WiMAX increasingly the dominant partner, and the non-standard alternatives will fade into the background.
Figure 4: Performance of some common wireless technologies Channel bandwidth 802.11a 802.16a 20MHz 10, 20MHz; 3.5, 7, 14MHz; 3, 6MHz EDGE, (GPRS+) CDMA2000 200KHz 1.25MHz 384Kbps 2Mbps 1.9 1.6 Max data rate 54Mbps 70Mbps Max Bps/Hz 2.7 5
Cellular Technologies
The US Federal Communications Commission is freeing up more airwaves for metropolitan wireless networks by loosening restrictions on spectrum now held by Sprint, WorldCom, the Catholic Church and universities. Such moves threaten the asset value of the 3G carriers spectrum licenses, since potentially competitive services can now be run over unlicensed bands (although in the US, this is to forget that 25 percent of the cellular operators spectrum was given away free in the early 1990s). The FCC's head Powell is staying neutral in the fight over whether to go all unlicensed, but is working to open up large chunks of spectrum for all comers. Inspired by the success of Wi-Fi, the FCC plans to open up a huge amount for unlicensed use, recently adding BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 17
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard 255MHz to bring the unlicensed total to 664MHz. By comparison, the early version of Wi-Fi ran on just 83MHz. Europe is acting more slowly, but all territories will gradually take a similar direction and free up larger amounts of unlicensed spectrum, sacrificing licensing revenue for the government to the expected stimulus to business and the economy of better mobile communications. 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 WiFi, it will be better for them to cannibalise their own networks 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. WiMAX can slash the single biggest cost of deployment: access charges for linking a hotspot to a local phone or cable network. A high frequency version of 802.16 would allow entrepreneurs to blast a narrow, data-rich beam between antennas miles apart an idea that independents have tried before without success, for instance, Teligent and Winstar, which went bankrupt in the late 1990s. 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.
Handoff project
In September, significant steps should be taken towards a standard that could turn the wireless communications industry on its head and assure the dominance of the WiMAX metro area standard. This is the proposed Handoff Project of the IEEE, which was set in motion in March and which will hold its second major meeting on 8-9 September in Denver, Colorado. The Handoff Executive Committee Study Group has a mandate to consider the viability of developing a standard for a common handoff framework for all 802 standards WiMAX, WiFi, short range technologies such as UWB and also for IEEE wired networking standards. The committee is headed by David Johnston, an Intel employee, Ajay Rajkumar from Lucent and Nokias Michael Williams as usual, the leadership of the key groups indicates the vendors that are putting the greatest time and investment into the work and therefore see it as most critical to their strategies going forward. There will also be work on handoff between WiMAX and cellular networks, an area where Lucent has been a pioneer. Such a standard, though in its very early stages and likely to take several years to come to fruition, would make all the arguments about different wireless standards irrelevant. Transmissions could be seamlessly passed between the most appropriate local, metro area BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 18
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard and wide area networks, especially with the development of radios that intelligently choose the best connection, as Intel is planning. Such a scenario will truly fulfil the promise that is currently enshrined in the far more limited roadmap towards 4G, the marriage of IP and cellular. Incorporate WiMAX into that mix too, and wireless communications could really become ubiquitous and robust for data and multimedia use. The work would allow for devices with interfaces to multiple 802 networks to roam between them. Key issues to be addressed, according to the committee, are compatibility with other work on handoff, particularly the more basic projects on the Wi-Fi side, 802.11k and 802.11f; interworking with upper layer protocols, especially IPv6 and IPv4; and security. At the first meeting in May, the main concern was defining the scope of the project, for instance, that work will focus only on the bottom two layers, the physical (PHY) and the medium access control (MAC). The September meeting will make big decisions on technological approaches such as how to build layer 2 constructs to reduce handoff latency and support real time applications; and Also important is monitoring of handoff work in other standards groups, especially the Internet Engineering Taskforces WLAN projects, the 3GPP cellular body and other IEEE groups, particularly 802.11x; as well as work being done on layer 3 and above by the 3GPP and other bodies. Johnson of Intel sees security as the biggest potential hurdle. Security is a complex issue addressed elsewhere (linksec, 802.1x, 802.10, 802.11i, EAP). Trying to include security procedure in handoff specifications would hugely expand the scope and conflict with other groups, he said. But a handoff standard must not undermine security so the work should include validating that it is compatible with existing 802 security architectures. The solution is likely to be to exclude security specifications from the standard but ensure that the final technology is compatible with other bodies security work.
Mobile-Fi
Standards battles are normally conducted in dusty committees and arouse little interest among technology purchasers until the vendors move the specifications into real products and real marketing wars. The IEEEs wireless standards are proving an exception to this. The relative speed with which these standards are being ratified and commercialised and the intense public interest in Wi-Fi and its relatives mean that the various 802.xxx specifications of the usually shadowy IEEE are being thrust into the spotlight. Perhaps the most key factor, though, is that the big vendors see, for the first time since the Internet boom, a genuine brand new source of revenue, and one at a sufficiently early stage that they stand a chance of stamping their control upon it. In the case of the youngest IEEE mobile standard, 802.20 or Mobile-Fi, however, some powerful names are feeling threatened rather than excited, which makes it probable that this particular specification will not be allowed to achieve the importance of its Wi-Fi and WiMAX cousins. The big names are gathering behind two IEEE standards that, for all their claims of being complementary, are heading for a collision that involves more than bickering in technical committees, but could instead be the cover for a serious battle for influence over the BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 19
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard evolving wireless market. On one hand we have WiMAX, on the other, 802.20, nicknamed Mobile-Fi, the first standard to be specifically designed from the outset to carry native IP traffic for fully mobile broadband access. It will provide symmetrical wireless rates from 1Mbps to 4Mbps in licensed spectrum below 3.5GHz over distances of about 15km. This makes it lower powered than WiMAX but more intrinsically mobile, offering latency of 10ms even in a fast moving vehicle, compared to 500ms for 3G. But 802.20 has three critical weaknesses WiMAX is starting to take on some of its remit; WiMAX has stronger and more aggressive support from key vendors; and the mobile operators, while relatively friendly towards 802.16, are hostile to 802.20.
802.20 technology
The stated mission of IEEE 802.20 is to develop a packet-based air interface optimised for transport of IP services, that will enable worldwide deployment of affordable, ubiquitous, always-on and interoperable mobile broadband wireless access networks that meet the needs of business and residential markets.
Broadband wireless services: Service provider

802.16e 802.20 3G Evolving from fixed wireless ISPs Start-up wireless operator or evolving cellular operator Cellular voice operator adding data support
Technology
802.16e Extension to 802.16a MAC and PHY Optimised to integrate with fixed stations Packet oriented Low latency 802.20 New PHY and MAC Optimised for packet data and smart antennas Optimised for full mobility at high speed Packet oriented Low latency 3G W-CDMA or CDMA2000 Evolution of voice-optimised GSM and CDMA Circuit oriented, though evolving to packets on the downlink High latency data architecture
Spectrum
802.16e 802.20 3G Licensed bands between 2GHz and 6GHz Licensed bands below 3.5GHz Licensed bands below 2.7GHz
The metropolitan area 802.20 standard will operate in licensed bands below 3.5GHz and promises to support far more simultaneous users than cellular systems, with greater spectral efficiencies and lower latency. Mark Klerer, former chair of the 802.20 working group and an executive director at Flarion, the standards main technical contributor, said Mobile-Fi will BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 20
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard have double the spectral efficiency of current cellular systems at 1bit/second/Hz/cell, with low latency and built-in quality of service, to give a similar experience to wired connections. Having been designed from the outset, uniquely, to use IP which has been cobbled in to 3G and WiMAX it is particularly targeted at voice over IP and native IP applications, as well as fast response uses such as financial transactions and gaming. As with Wi-Fi and WiMAX, Mobile-Fi follows the IEEE model of designing a new PHY (physical layer or layer 1 protocol) and MAC (media access control or layer 2 protocol) around the IP packet (layer 3). Cellular 3G technologies are also incorporating IP by retrofitting their technologies and looking to full IP integration with 4G, but they use a circuitrather than packet-based approach. The circuit-based route involves high latency and poor reliability, which have forced 3G adaptations into cumbersome workarounds such as spoofing and translation, and a centralized network architecture that goes against the nature of distributed IP.
Two IEEE camps

This emerging standard it will not be ratified until late 2004, if then - increasingly seems to be positioned against the mobile version of WiMAX, 802.16e, which has strong interest from Nokia. Although the two come from different technical starting points and solve slightly different problems, the broadening remit of WiMAX threatens to make 802.20 redundant. Initially 802.16e was positioned as providing lightly mobile support for users moving between fixed metro points. But its brief is expanding and early speculation that the two would be aligned to create a single umbrella specification now seems ill-founded. Instead of the two camps coming together, as the IEEE itself would encourage, the big backers of 802.20, Motorola and Cisco, are getting restive and seem determined to try to put their preferred standard in a dominant position, improving their own place in the mobile market at the same time. Such an approach will be disastrous. WiMAX has a huge headstart on Mobile-Fi even its e version is at least a year ahead of its rival, and the industry support behind it is gathering pace rapidly. Also, it is a technology that can be accommodated relatively easily by the mobile operators. By contrast, Mobile-Fi will be incorporated in products after WiMAX is already adopted the standard will not be ratified until the end of 2004 - and it is seen as deeply threatening by the powerful cellular industry, with several 3G players having taken recent and possibly effective steps to squash it. So why do these two groups not seek to work together on a broad specification for different types of mobile broadband wireless connections, rather than competing? The politics are symbolic of some of the most fundamental clashes going on in todays technology business, with stakes massively high as vendors seek to create a new market for themselves after the buffeting of the recent recession. So we have Intel ranged against Motorola in almost every area in IEEE, in the UWB standards battle, and in the cellular world. Once at arms length from each other, the two chip giants have locked horns this year and are using every weapon, including the important one of standards processes, to try to be the alpha male in mobile communications. The contrasting financial results of the second quarter threw their current positions into painful BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 21
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard relief for Motorola the company looks like a wounded giant and is becoming increasingly desperate in its bid to keep Intel away from its smartphone base. The other big names behind the two would-be standards are Nokia, on the WiMAX side, and Cisco, which backs Flarion, the key technology driver behind 802.20. Once again, we see an epic battle represented within the walls of the IEEE. The traditional enterprise networking supplier, moving rapidly into wireless and even smartphones, but finding itself threatened by rivals from the telecoms world; and the upstart, the handset maker daring to fancy itself as a vendor of enterprise mobile solutions and bringing its operator allies along for the ride.
Overlap with WiMAX

All these politics have polarized the IEEE projects this year. In March, the standards body ratified 802.16a, the non-line of sight, fixed wireless version of WiMAX, and kicked off the 802.20 process. At this stage, Intel and Nokia had only just decided to put their full weight behind WiMAX and both technologies were still obscure. They were positioned, quite realistically at the time, as complementary. WiMAX had come from a background of addressing last mile requirements using fixed wireless, while 802.20 was seeking to standardize various efforts to provide a fully mobile broadband solution using IP. Even the mobile variant of WiMAX, 802.16e, was still widely seen as an extension to a fixed wireless standard rather than a fully mobile standard in its own right. Now, 802.20 activists no longer regard e as a distant cousin. The role of WiMAX has been enhanced considerably, driven by the new prominence of public Wi-Fi. Last mile was an issue mainly for wireline broadband carriers whether they should cut their costs and accelerate their roll-out using wireless rather than wired technologies; whether other vendors would threaten them with wireless alternatives. As such, though important in its own world, it was relatively obscure as far as mainstream technology vendors were concerned. But once the potential of WiMAX to dramatically enhance the potential of Wi-Fi by backhauling hotspots and providing wireless networking over 30 miles and more, it became far hotter property. For Intel, it was a way to make wireless notebooks and devices even more attractive by increasing their capabilities through a more powerful technology than the limited Wi-Fi. For Nokia, even more significantly, what had started as a potential new string to its ailing base station unit, suddenly became a means of creating a whole new handset business too, with the company promising WiMAX cellphones by 2005. This encroached well into 802.20 territory. This effort was initially driven mainly by the pioneers of fourth generation wireless IP technologies, notably Flarion and Navini Networks, which refused to have anything to do with 802.16e, claiming theirs was a purer IP solution. The politics became clear at an 802.20 meeting in June. At this, senior executives from Lucent and NTT DoCoMo (as well as Motorola) became heads of the IEEE Working Group, replacing executives from Flarion, Navini and smart antenna pioneer Arraycomm. Navini claims that the new chiefs, particularly NTT, had staged a political coup to wrest control from 4G technologists and ensure that 802.20 did not gain ground against either 3G or 802.16e. Apparently, members of 802.16e and representatives from cellular carriers gained voting rights and used them to install their own candidates and sabotage the process.
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Figure 5: Flarion provides some of the base technology for 802.20
Source: Flarion
The IEEE is reviewing the election and may enforce a change of line-up at a meeting this week, but whatever the in-fighting, the little drama highlights the issues facing 802.20, and why it, and Motorola/Cisco, should give up any idea of trying to make it dominant.
Hostility from the 3G industry

Two forces are ranged against it. One, as we have seen, is 802.16e, no longer even pretending to coexist peacefully with its sister standard, but instead backed by companies that want to direct the future of mobile connections unhindered. The other is the 3G cellular industry. While WiMAX, like Wi-Fi, can be seen as a 3G alternative, it also offers opportunities to mobile carriers, to get into the last mile market and to build up their own hotspot networks as an integrated service with 3G, the direction that most operators are taking. Carriers seem to think that, as long as they can adopt Wi-Fi and WiMAX earlier and develop a better business model than the independents, these will be technologies that they can turn to their advantage. They are almost certainly right about this. But 802.20 is a different matter. It, too, could be adopted by mobile operators, and some have run trials of wireless IP with partners such as Arraycomm as a potential complement to 3G, or a way forward should their 3G investments never pay off. However, the big operators are fearful that, as more spectrum is put on offer, especially in the US, potentially for very low prices, new entrants or current small operators could use low cost 802.20 networks to launch rival mobile networks that would be more attractive to end users than 3G. In the mean time, to launch 4G services themselves, they need to sacrifice some of their own precious spectrum. The big players, notably NTT DoCoMo, are driving 4G which integrates IP and cellular communications along the route of their own CDMA and TDMA protocols, in which they have so much investment and expertise. The 802.20 proposal uses OFDM in a pure form as an alternative to 3G protocols (as does WiMAX). Only Nextel has been involved in a positive way in 802.20 from the beginning, probably because of its deeply entwined relationship with
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard Motorola. Navini and other vendors are convinced that the 3G players have packed out the IEEE committee with a determination to kill Mobile-Fi before it is born. Even if this is paranoia, and the cellular operators are merely trying to control rather than kill the process, by the time 802.20 products are out there, they will not only have WiMAX to contend with but broadband IP services will be common on 3G/4G networks. To have any chance of survival, 802.20 needs to work with the 3G groups such as 3GPP, form better relationships with the carriers, and so provide technology that works with 3G. All this will take far more time and political nous than 802.20 has at its disposal.
Vendor support
Even if the IEEE refuses to allow the NTT election, a decision it has to make this week, 802.20 has no chance of succeeding without powerful vendor support. Not that Motorola and Cisco are to be disregarded of course, but so far they have been far less aggressive in backing Mobile-Fi than Intel has been about WiMAX. They seem to be disrupting WiMAX by presenting their own alternative, without making very positive moves in favour of Mobile-Fi. A comment from IPWireless, which is not part of any IEEE group but has been a pioneer of mobile IP, is telling. Im not worried about 802.16e. If Intels name hadnt been associated with the press release, nobody would have taken any notice, said senior director of marketing, Jon Hambridge. That is the whole point. Nobody would have got excited about WiMAX without Intels and Nokias activities because it would have lacked the vendor interest that takes a standard from obscure committees to real products and market strength. After all, the IEEE ratifies standards, it has no responsibility for ensuring their uptake or success. That is the role of the industry players, which score the double whammy of helping to set the standard and then using it to encourage users to step up their spending. Motorola has the potential to do a similar job for 802.20 but it is in a more ambiguous position. With the carriers new found hostility, it will not want to alienate the main buyers of its cellphones too recklessly. So it seems that 802.20 will fade into insignificance, or will be redirected into a niche application, notably one area where it excels mobile communications in fast moving vehicles (the standard specifically supports vehicular mobility, at speeds up to 250km per hour). Undoubtedly its real supporters, led by Flarion, will establish it in their own market and will gain some wins with second rung operators, especially in developing countries. Interoperability via 802.20 will benefit them here and work done under the IEEE auspices will filter through into operators 4G developments and into WiMAX. The best result will be if both camps come together, with the 802.20 rump adopting WiMAX specifications into their products and the best of 802.20 finding its way into 802.16e. Ironically, this has a far better chance of happening once Motorola accepts defeat and seeks out another weapon to push forward its strategies, and the vendor stand-off collapses with the victory of WiMAX.
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5. The Last Mile: WiMAX and Broadband Wireless Alternatives

Various technologies are being trialled for delivering broadband wirelessly to the last mile:
to extend the edges of the 3G network and fill in coverage gaps to provide a lower cost alternative to cable and DSL to provide enterprise campus-wide or multi-site wireless networks by providing backhaul for WLANs.
The key technological approaches are:
WiMAX Wireless Local Loop based on IP and OFDM, including wireless voice over IP Satellite Smart antenna
The history of broadband wireless has been largely one of disappointment to date. Pioneers like Teligent, Nextlink and Winstar entered the market in the late 1990s with networks based on cost effective LMDS (Local Multipoint Distribution System), but they played safe and stayed in over-served metro areas of the US rather than remote regions, and having paid huge federal fees for their licenses, all three companies filed for bankruptcy. Carriers such as MCI and Sprint invested in an alternative, MMDS (Multi-channel Multipoint Distribution System) but failed to gain significant market momentum. Hence the excitement around Wi-Fi hotspots, hotzones and community networks, but coverage scalability beyond a few nodes is hard to achieve without performance failures. Enter WiMAX, promising a lower cost backhaul for these hotspots than T1 and the option of a mesh network topology, as well as being a wireless extension to cable, fibre and DSL for last mile. WiMAX will drive broadband wireless access (BWA), but it has also come to the fore at a time of renewed interest in wireless last mile, as operators look for new sources of revenue and consumer demand for fast internet access grows exponentially. Like Wi-Fi, BWA looks set to achieve the difficult task of creating a boom in a depressed communications sector, by offering better price/performance for network users and a revenue opportunity for squeezed suppliers. Europe has been slow to get excited about this market, but now that BWA solutions based on IP are becoming realistic, even the 3G operators there will need to examine these as an addition to their service. In the US, last mile and wireless broadband solutions using unlicensed spectrum have been given a huge boost by the freeing up of vast swathes of bands by the FCC. The US carriers have also shown interest in last mile solutions to extend their networks and plug gaps. In Europe, progress is slower because the carriers have a more ubiquitous network and a vast BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 25
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard financial investment in conventional cellular networks, and regulators have been less forward thinking. Licensed wireless technologies ArrayComm, Flarion Technologies, IP Wireless and other vendors, many using smart antenna approaches, are the most viable wide area wireless solutions available to operators and WISPs now though most customers will be looking to those with a clear 802.16 roadmap. Designed from the ground up to support metropolitan area services, they'll leverage the existing cell tower infrastructure to deliver data services at prices far below those of 3G, reliably and with coverage far better than that of Wi-Fi. With WiMAX, they will have a broader market to address, with low cost operators working in unlicensed spectrum. Cellular carriers cannot be ignored their assets of licensed spectrum and vast cellular tower infrastructure will be essential to ensure the survival of any new alternative. New wireless broadband technologies may cut into cellular networks business, but they will never be an either/or cellular operators need last mile solutions to extend their systems and subscriber bases at an economical rate, while the last mile pioneers will stand a better chance of survival if they integrate with and make use of the support and infrastructure of the operators if their technologies are not to be confined to niches. They will be able to use 802.16a base stations as alternatives, but these two systems are likely to interoperate as they evolve, especially with giants like Nokia straddling both camps. Nearly all the proprietary point/multipoint BWA vendors are doing the sensible thing and refocusing to build their products around WiMAX silicon, ensuring lower costs of manufacture and interoperability. Quickest off the mark are those that use 256 sub-carrier OFDM, which is emerging as the winner among the PHY variants.
BWA alternatives to WiMAX

Not everyone is taking the WiMAX pledge though. Flarion is the leader among OFDM-based vendors that are backing the metro area mobile wireless standard, 802.20 or Mobile-Fi, instead. IPWireless supports neither IEEE approach, but is still pushing its own mobile broadband technology, which is based on an IP packet data implementation of the UMTS 3G standard, operating at over 2.5 miles in urban areas at 16Mbps in 5MHz and 10GMz channels. This technology is less powerful or long distance than WiMAX, though it does have the advantage, especially for second tier mobile operators, of being similar to cellular networks to implement and manage and providing good interoperability with the various flavours of 3G. Its natural home, then, is in extending the networks of the mobile carriers in outlying regions, but it is keen to attack the hotspot sector too, an ambition that will be hard to realize in the face of WiMAX. However, the case that the companys chief executive, Chris Gilbert, makes for IPWireless over Wi-Fi hotspots is valid for all BWA technologies. He points out that users will not want to have to hunt for hotspots, and that broadband alternatives can offer not only longer distances from the base station, but also mobility as supported by IPWireless and by the mobile version of WiMAX, 802.16e.
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard Another backhaul option that has gained coverage recently is free space optical, a technology that is primarily used to extend local fibre networks but can also be used for backhaul. One supplier specifically targeting this new direction is Omnilux. FSO is more expensive than wireless - $1,500 per node for Omnilux, which is cheap by FSO standards but each node operates at 100Mbps and has routing and quality of service capabilities plus embedded Wi-Fi. Unlikely to be mainstream, but meshes of these nodes could also be an attractive option for some enterprises. And of course there is satellite. There have been several announcements recently of combined satellite/Wi-Fi products that bundle an 802.11 access point with the satellite system. Satellite provides the backhaul to a fixed antenna, which then transmits the connection locally using Wi-Fi. This is a very expensive option of course, so mainly targeted at areas where there is no alternative. For instance, an island in Alaska gained a satellite broadband hotspot last week, with Wi-Fi providing a simpler last mile option than other fixed wireless approaches. Another approach, entirely outside the cellular operators remit, is to extend the capacity of Wi-Fi. Companies such as Vivato, Ricochet and 5G Wireless have been developing technologies to extend the distances covered by 802.11 standards without the usual line of sight requirement although their future looks uncertain, given that WiMAX will solve the problem in a year. Companies such as 5G and Vivato do use standard IEEE approaches and so have an advantage over some more individualistic solutions to providing a wireless alternative to DSL in the broadband last mile, though they cannot come close to WiMAX 70Mbps or its distances. 5G has conducted a trial in its home state of California, connecting buildings four miles apart, with no line of sight, at sustained throughput speed of 3Mbps. It claims its technology can achieve up to 5Mbps over eight to 10 miles. 5G claims that such performance makes Wi-Fi a viable option for metropolitan areas and campus-based corporations and will look to sign up ISP, corporate or municipal authority customers in the coming weeks. Bandspeed acquired its proprietary, patent pending WWAN technology with Wireless Think Tank last year. It operates in the 2.4GHz and 5.3GHz ranges and uses three co-located radios as a base, supporting 750 clients within a radius of up to 10 miles. The cost of this facility is $15,000. 5G is working on a new configuration that will support 2,072 clients per co-location. This compares to the cost of an alternative approach, VPOP, used by some wireless last mile providers, which supports 170 clients per location for $38,000.
IP and smart antennas

There is no doubt that IP-based technologies cope with many of 3Gs limitations in terms of data transfer, and also provide a lower cost installation of local loop, which is not dependent on line of sight transmission as most early solutions were. But they are still weak on voice voice over IP has quality issues and requires specialized phones. In less than five years, though, we should have VoIP cellphones that will finally establish IP as the dominant technology for mobile broadband communications, sidelining the descendants of both 3G and 802.11x. BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart) 27
WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard The cellular carriers are working towards this IP world with their own implementations, under the 4G label, but for the first time they will meet new and viable competition as they are forced to use a technology platform that can also be offered by smaller (and less debtridden) alternative operators. IP-based alternatives to 3G are coming from a host of mainly US start-ups, including Flarion, IPWireless, Soma and Navini, all using the OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) physical layer technology at the heart of 802.11a and some digital television. This splits a high frequency signal into several lower frequency ones, that are then sent by separate paths to achieve higher data rates than 3G. Many of these start-ups rely on smart antenna technology in place of conventional base stations, and could incorporate wireless Man standards as these develop. ArrayComm and IPWireless have been two of the stars of this American dominated field, but and two other promising start-ups are Navini Networks and BeamReach Networks. Navini raised $25m in Series C funding earlier this year, bringing its total backing to date to $91m, impressive in the current investment climate though a drop in the ocean if Navini fails to gain heavyweight partners for its ambitious smart antenna network plans. But given the new spotlight on last mile and on alternatives to 3G and fixed wire, the climate for start-ups such as Navini to gain powerful partners is improving greatly. Most carriers outside Europe, and some within it, are testing alternative last mile technologies and Nokia, Ericsson, Lucent and Nortel have all tested smart antenna networks using various approaches, although they have so far not pushed these aggressively to operators, presumably for fear of cannibalising their still lucrative business in selling conventional base stations. Smart antennas are one of the most interesting approaches to restructuring the network in order to support more users at fast rates, offering broadband performance and quality over a wireless link. Smart antenna suppliers cut the number of base stations by using multiple antennas in parallel, making highly efficient use of the available spectrum. They can be implemented as a more efficient technology for 3G carriers, but can also operate as a separate network to challenge 3G. Navini claims 70 percent lower TCO than first generation wireless broadband solutions and 50 percent lower than DSL. Its flagship product is the Ripwave base station and antenna system, which uses adaptive phased-array antenna technology that can penetrate walls. Ripwave modems connect to this network and offer broadband access to the internet and links between Wi-Fi and long distance networks. Another broadband fixed wireless player, BeamReach Networks, completed a $15m series C round this year, claiming the money would enable it to ramp up for significant roll-outs in the coming year, following a current trial of its technology with US carrier Verizon in Virginia. BeamReachs Airlink technology uses Adaptive MultiBeam OFDM, a smart antenna technology that claims 16 times better cell coverage than and better spectral efficiency than 3G. BeamReach says that, while 2G and 3G networks sometimes now include basic OFDM facilities, adaptive multibeam is more efficient because multiple frequencies can be reused in each cell, and data is transmitted over two channels at different frequencies to improve
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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard speed. Adaptive OFDM gives spectral efficiency of over 10bits/sec/Hz/cell compared to under 1bit for broadband CDMA networks such as W-CDMA. This contrasts with Navinis approach, which is based on a technology called MCSB (multicarrier synchronous beamforming), which is similar to BeamReachs but based on time division rather than frequency division, which Navini claims is better for voice than frequency based solutions such as OFDM. Navini, an Intel-funded wireless broadband vendor, is looking to 802.20 as its key standard. The start-ups will have to ensure that their efforts are standards-based and integrated with the WiMAX work to stand a chance of survival. And with WiMAX reducing the barriers to entry for new suppliers, they also need to establish a beach-head now to ensure that they have sufficient installed base either to survive in a newly competitive sector, or to be attractive to one of the larger players.
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6. Conclusions
WiMAX is the most important of the host of wireless standards emerging from the IEEE and 3G bodies. Its impact will owe much to Wi-Fi, which has created the interest in and market acceptance of wireless networking to enable WiMAX to flourish in the mainstream, not least by attracting Intel into the sector. But its effect on the world of business and consumer internet and wireless access will be far more profound. Within five years, we expect WiMAX to be the dominant technology for wireless networking. By that time it will be fully mobile as well as providing low cost fixed broadband access that will open up regions where internet access has so far not been practical. As the cellular operators move to IP-based fourth generation systems, they will embrace WiMAX as they are doing with the far more limited Wi-Fi. WiMAX will be the catalyst for a shakeout of operators, with some of the small independents falling to the large players, still hunting for a more profitable revenue stream than 3G. WiMAX will become the dominant solution in China, the worlds largest potential market for broadband users. The standard has already been adopted by the government and will fill in many of the gaps in the sketchy 3G coverage. The hype around Wi-Fi will die down and 802.11 will return to its rightful place as a useful but limited local area technology, fully integrated with WiMAX at the backhaul. Intel will be a clear winner from its decision to drive WiMAX. Its next generation Centrino will support WiMAX and therefore have a headstart in huge markets, including the rural regions of the major nations. Nokia too will profit from the rise of 802.16, both by adding a new base station business to its ailing equipment unit and by developing two- or three-mode handsets for cellular, Wi-Fi and WiMAX. WiMAX will be the most significant technology to date in making wireless access ubiquitous and, as more free spectrum is opened up, in creating a major shake-up of the traditional shape of the wireless and mobile communications sector.
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7. APPENDIX: Wi-Fi and WiMAX Compared

WiMAX Licensed and license-exempt 128-bit Triple-DES and 1024-bit RSA security COVERAGE Optimised for outdoor non-line of sight Supports mesh networks Supports advanced smart antenna RANGE Optimised up to 50km Point to multipoint Handles many users widely spread out Tolerant of greater multipath delay spread up to 10ms PHY and MAC designed for multimile range Standard MAC QUALITY OF SERVICE Grant request MAC Designed to support voice and video from the start Supports differentiated service levels e.g. T1 for business, best effort for consumer TDD/FDD/HFDDsymmetric or asymmetric Centrally enforced QoS PERFORMANCE Bandwidth 10, 20MHz; 1.75, 3.5, 7, 14Hz; 3, 6MHz Maximum data rate 70Mbps Maximum 5.0 bps/Hz SCALABILITY Channel bandwidths can be chosen by operator for sectorization Scalable independent of bandwidth with 1.5MHz to 20MHz width channels MAC supports thousands of users Wi-Fi License-exempt only WPA+WEP security, inadequate though 802.11i will improve
Optimised for indoor use No mesh support within standards Smart antenna support proprietary Optimised for 100 meters Point to point No near-far compensation Designed for indoor multipath delay spread of 0.8ms PHY and MAC optimised for 100m range Range can be extended but then MAC non-standard Contention-based MAC, no guaranteed QoS Standard cannot guarantee latency for voice or video No allowance for differentiated levels of service on a per user basis TDD onlyasymmetric Proposed 802.11e QoS standard is prioritisation only Bandwidth 20MHz Maximum data rate 54Mbps Maximum 2.7 bps/Hz Wide 20MHz channels
MAC supports tens of users
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8. APPENDIX: WiMAX Players

Companies with votes on the IEEE 802.16 groups:
Wi-LAN (3 votes) Runcom Technologies (3 votes) Nokia (3 votes) Intel (3 votes) Wavesat Wireless (2 votes) Telnecity Group (2 votes) Malibu Networks (2 votes) MacPhy Modems (2 votes) InterDigital Communications (2 votes). Harris (2 votes) Cowave Networks (2 votes) Comtech (2 votes) AVALCOM-RINICOM (2 votes) Xilinx WaveIP Vectrad Networks Thomson SiGlobe Corporation STMicroelectronics Redline Communications. Radiant Networks RF Magic Proxim Paul Thompson Associates Panasonic NIST Medley Systems Hitachi Cable Fujitsu Ensemble Communications. EPIN Technologies Cymil Communications CoWave Networks Broadstorm BeamReach Networks Aperto Networks Alvarion Airspan Communications Agilent Technologies Advantech AMT
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Members of the WiMAX Forum

Agilent Airspan Networks Alvarion Aperto Networks Atheros Compliance Certification Services Ensemble Communications Fujitsu Microelectronics America Hughes Network Systems Intel Intracom NewsIQ NIST Nokia OFDM Forum Powerwave Technologies Proxim Redline Communications RF Integration Siware SI Works SR Telecom Telenecity Group Towerstream Turbo Concept Wavesat Wi-LAN Winova Wireless
33

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WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

3. The 802.16a Standard

Markets for WiMAX

Last mile to the home

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

Background and 802.16

Technical specifications of 802.16a

Fundamental technologies in 802.16a

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

Dynamic frequency selection in unlicensed spectrum

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

Bandwidth on demand (frame by frame)

5.0 4.5 MidEast/Africa Asia Europe Americas

4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

4. Relationship With Other Wireless Technologies

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Broadband wireless services: Service provider

Two IEEE camps

Overlap with WiMAX

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

Hostility from the 3G industry

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

5. The Last Mile: WiMAX and Broadband Wireless Alternatives

The key technological approaches are:

BWA alternatives to WiMAX

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

IP and smart antennas

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

7. APPENDIX: Wi-Fi and WiMAX Compared

MAC supports tens of users

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

8. APPENDIX: WiMAX Players

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

WiMAX: The Critical Wireless Standard

Members of the WiMAX Forum

BluePrint Wi-Fi (ARCchart)

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