DEPLOYMENT SCENARIOS OF WIMAX

WiMAX can potentially be deployed in a number of scenarios depending upon the requirements, financial considerations and need of supported services. The following subsections discuss the most probable scenarios in detail.

A. Wireless Backhauling :

Until now, wired backhaul had been the prevalent form of backhaul due to an abundance of wired technologies. Heavy investments had already been made into laying down cables and other infrastructure. With the advent of WiMAX, operators have a cost-effective and high-performance alternate to traditional backhauling technologies. The robust bandwidth offered by WiMAX makes it a superior backhauling alternate for enterprizes, hotspots, and point-to-point networks.

B. LOS based wireless broadband access:

Last-mile broadband technologies, such as WiMAX, shall accelerate the deployment of 802.11 hotspots and Small Office Home Office (SOHO) wireless LANs. By allowing TSP’s to reduce the installation time associated with traditional wired technologies, such as T1/E1 and DSL. WiMAX shall allow these TSP’s to offer quicker and cheaper services to their end customers. WiMAX also enables TSP’s to offer configurable on demand high-speed connectivity to its subscribers, and allows them to instantaneously vary the service levels, depending

on prevailing requirements. For the same reasons, 802.16-d can be used to serve remote and under-served areas with low population densities where traffic can be cost-effectively backhauled to the core network using LOS based 802.16-d technology. It is quite clear that such on demand lastmile broadband services shall provide new revenue-generating opportunities for TSP’s.

C. Mobile Wireless Services:

With the proliferation of 802.11 hotspots, users will naturally want to be wirelessly connected, even when they are outside the range of the nearest hotspots. The 802.16-e flavor of WiMAX introduces mobile capabilities, quite similar to those offered by traditional wireless technologies, such as GSM, GPRS/EDGE and 3G. With 802.16-e, users can be handed off from one Base Station (BS) to another while hey move across cell boundaries. This requires the presence of mobility-enabling nodes, such as Access Service Network (ASN) Gateways in the Operators network. 802.16-e variant supports upto 125Km/hr speeds of the subscriber stations with fixed base station.