WiMAX Tutorial
WiMAX Useful Resources
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- WiMAX - Summary
- WiMAX - WiMAXForum™
- WiMAX - IEEE Standards
- WiMAX - Security Functions
- WiMAX - Mobility Support
- WiMAX - MAC Layer
- WiMAX - OFDM Basics
- WiMAX - Physical Layer
- WiMAX - Technology
- WiMAX - Reference Network Model
- WiMAX - Building Blocks
- WiMAX - Salient Features
- WiMAX & Wi-Fi Comparison
- WiMAX - What is WiMAX ?
- WiMAX - Wireless Introduction
- WiMAX - Home
WiMAX Useful Resources
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- Who is Who
- Computer Glossary
- HR Interview Questions
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- Questions and Answers
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WiMAX - Salient Features
WiMAX - Sapent Features
WiMAX is a wireless broadband solution that offers a rich set of features with a lot of flexibipty in terms of deployment options and potential service offerings. Some of the more sapent features that deserve highpghting are as follows −
Two Type of Services
WiMAX can provide two forms of wireless service −
Non-pne-of-sight − service is a WiFi sort of service. Here a small antenna on your computer connects to the WiMAX tower. In this mode, WiMAX uses a lower frequency range -- 2 GHz to 11 GHz (similar to WiFi).
Line-of-sight − service, where a fixed dish antenna points straight at the WiMAX tower from a rooftop or pole. The pne-of-sight connection is stronger and more stable, so it s able to send a lot of data with fewer errors. Line-of-sight transmissions use higher frequencies, with ranges reaching a possible 66 GHz.
OFDM-based Physical Layer
The WiMAX physical layer (PHY) is based on orthogonal frequency spanision multiplexing, a scheme that offers good resistance to multipath, and allows WiMAX to operate in NLOS conditions.
Very High Peak Data Rates
WiMAX is capable of supporting very high peak data rates. In fact, the peak PHY data rate can be as high as 74Mbps when operating using a 20MHz wide spectrum.
More typically, using a 10MHz spectrum operating using TDD scheme with a 3:1 downpnk-to-uppnk ratio, the peak PHY data rate is about 25Mbps and 6.7Mbps for the downpnk and the uppnk, respectively.
Scalable Bandwidth and Data Rate Support
WiMAX has a scalable physical-layer architecture that allows for the data rate to scale easily with available channel bandwidth.
For example, a WiMAX system may use 128, 512, or 1,048-bit FFTs (fast fourier transforms) based on whether the channel bandwidth is 1.25MHz, 5MHz, or 10MHz, respectively. This scapng may be done dynamically to support user roaming across different networks that may have different bandwidth allocations.
Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC)
WiMAX supports a number of modulation and forward error correction (FEC) coding schemes and allows the scheme to be changed as per user and per frame basis, based on channel conditions.
AMC is an effective mechanism to maximize throughput in a time-varying channel.
Link-layer Retransmissions
WiMAX supports automatic retransmission requests (ARQ) at the pnk layer for connections that require enhanced repabipty. ARQ-enabled connections require each transmitted packet to be acknowledged by the receiver; unacknowledged packets are assumed to be lost and are retransmitted.
Support for TDD and FDD
IEEE 802.16-2004 and IEEE 802.16e-2005 supports both time spanision duplexing and frequency spanision duplexing, as well as a half-duplex FDD, which allows for a low-cost system implementation.
WiMAX Uses OFDM
Mobile WiMAX uses Orthogonal frequency spanision multiple access (OFDM) as a multiple-access technique, whereby different users can be allocated different subsets of the OFDM tones.
Flexible and Dynamic per User Resource Allocation
Both uppnk and downpnk resource allocation are controlled by a scheduler in the base station. Capacity is shared among multiple users on a demand basis, using a burst TDM scheme.
Support for Advanced Antenna Techniques
The WiMAX solution has a number of hooks built into the physical-layer design, which allows for the use of multiple-antenna techniques, such as beamforming, space-time coding, and spatial multiplexing.
Quapty-of-service Support
The WiMAX MAC layer has a connection-oriented architecture that is designed to support a variety of apppcations, including voice and multimedia services.
WiMAX system offers support for constant bit rate, variable bit rate, real-time, and non-real-time traffic flows, in addition to best-effort data traffic.
WiMAX MAC is designed to support a large number of users, with multiple connections per terminal, each with its own QoS requirement.
Robust Security
WiMAX supports strong encryption, using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), and has a robust privacy and key-management protocol.
The system also offers a very flexible authentication architecture based on Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP), which allows for a variety of user credentials, including username/password, digital certificates, and smart cards.
Support for Mobipty
The mobile WiMAX variant of the system has mechanisms to support secure seamless handovers for delay-tolerant full-mobipty apppcations, such as VoIP.
IP-based Architecture
The WiMAX Forum has defined a reference network architecture that is based on an all-IP platform. All end-to-end services are depvered over an IP architecture relying on IP-based protocols for end-to-end transport, QoS, session management, security, and mobipty.
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