Future of 2009 : WiMax - Last mile technology

What is WiMax?

WiMax stands for Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access. It is a telecommunication technology that provides wireless transmission of data using variety of transmission modes from point to multi-point links to portable and fully mobile internet access.This technology provides up to 72 Mbit/s symmetric broadband speed without the need for cables. This technology is based on IEEE802.16 standard.WiMAX can provide broadband wireless access (BWA) up to 30 miles (50 km) for fixed stations, and 3 - 10 miles (5 - 15 km) for mobile stations. In contrast, the WiFi/802.11 wireless local area network standard is limited in most cases to only 100 - 300 feet (30 - 100m).

Wimax is proposed to be launched in India and a number of other nations very soon and is soon going to be available across the globe making it the most widely used communication technology. In India wimax deployment is delayed due to the government of India’s pending decision on allocation of spectrum for commercial wimax services. Majority of spectrum which is worldwide used for wimax is being held up by the defence forces in India which is creating further delay as the defence forces are not ready to give up their frequencies which are not even being used for any purpose at all.

The service providers which are goin to roll out this service soon are Reliance Wimax, Sify wimax, MTNL wimax and a few others which have plans in the pipeline and some of them are applying for licenses at the moment. Reliance wimax has already been launched in Bangalore and Pune with plans for a Mumbai launch any time soon.

The Government of India too realized the immense potential of this technology in bridging the digital divide – as it made a decision to allocate and auction WiMAX spectrum to the 2.3 and 2.5 GHz frequency bands. Buoyed by the government decision, the WiMAX Forum predicted that the Indian WiMAX market including devices will be worth $13 billion by 2012. The Forum has also said that it will add an Indian certification lab to support certification of products in this region. Private players such as Intel too announced their plans to tap this promising market, by working with the WiMAX forum to bring affordable low cost devices that would help in increasing Internet access.

Architecture of WiMax

The WiMAX Forum has defined an architecture that defines how a WiMAX network connects with other networks, and a variety of other aspects of operating such a network, including address allocation, authentication, etc. An overview of the architecture is given in the illustration.

This defines the following components, plus a number of interconnections (or reference points) between these, labeled R1 to R5 and R8:

• SS/MS: the Subscriber Station/Mobile Station
• ASN: the Access Service Network
• BS: Base station, part of the ASN
• ASN-GW: the ASN Gateway, part of the ASN
• CSN: the Connectivity Service Network
• HA: Home Agent, part of the CSN
• AAA: AAA Server, part of the CSN
• NAP: a Network Access Provider
• NSP: a Network Service Provider

It is important to note that the functional architecture can be designed into various hardware configurations rather than fixed configurations. For example, the architecture is flexible enough to allow remote/mobile stations of varying scale and functionality and Base Stations of varying size - e.g. femto, pico, and mini BS as well as macros.

Posted on : Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Leave a Comment (0)

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