Mobile WiMAX and Its Various Features

Mobile WiMAX

Mobile WiMAX is a rapidly growing broadband wireless access technology based on IEEE 802.16-2004 and IEEE 802.16e-2005 air-interface standards. Its a fast growing broadband access technology that enables low-cost mobile Internet applications, and realizes the convergence of mobile and fixed broadband access in a single air interface and network architecture. Mobile WiMAX combines OFDMA and advanced MIMO schemes along with flexible bandwidth and fast link adaptation, creating a highly efficient air interface that exceeds the capacity of existing and evolving 3G radio access networks. WiMAX networks, built on all-IP network architecture for plug and play network deployments, can support a mix of different usage and service models. While some consider mobile WiMAX as a candidate for the fourth generation of mobile networks, others view it as the first generation of mobile Internet technologies emerging from a wider ecosystem targeting to extend the success of WiFi over wide area networks supporting mobility.

Mobile WiMAX operates in 2 to 6 GHz range which is mainly licensed bands. Mobile WiMAX will be the most famous technology in the coming years .the figure below shows the mobile subscribers in the coming years, it has been predicted that up till 2010 WiMAX industry.

Main Features of Mobile WiMAX:

1. Mobile WiMAX Support Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access as the radio access method for improved Multipath performance in Non-Line of Sight(NLOS) environments.

2. High Data Rates: The use of smart antenna technologies(ex: AAS, MIMO) sub-channelization schemes(OFDM) and adaptive modulation and coding schemes enables mobile WiMAX to support peakUL/DL data rate of 18.5Mbps per sector in a 10MHz channel.

3. Quality of Services: Mobile WiMAX supports connection-oriented QoS, providing accurate control for each service flow over the air interface. Moreover, since the orthogonal sub-channels develop no intra-cell interference in both downlink and uplink, the link quality and QoS can be easily controlled.

4. Scalability: The Mobile WiMAX technology utilizes Scalable-OFDMA(S-OFDMA) and has the capability to operate in scable bandwidths from 1.25 to 20MHz to comply with various spectrum allocations worldwide.

5. Security: The Mobile WiMAX incorporates the most advanced security features that are currently used in wireless acces system.These include Extensible Authentication Protocol(AEP) based authentication, Advanced Encryption Stssndard(AES) based authenticaton encryption and Cipher-based message authentication code(CMAC) and Hashed Message Authentication Code(HMAC) based control message protection schemes.

6. Mobility: Mobile WiMAX supports optimized handoff schemes, ensuring seanless services continuty with latency less than 50 milliseconds. The user mobility support is avantegeous for handling voice and other latency -sensitive applications.

7. Easy Implementation: Mobile WiMAX uses a simple protocol structure that contains fewer protocols as compared with 3G cellular system, thus enabling Easy Implementation.