Business and Applications

WiMAX® Release 2 offers many improvements with respect to Release 1. A core enhancement is support for the WirelessMAN-Advanced air interface of IEEE 802.16m [3]. This follow-on from IEEE 802.16e [2] promises up to double the air interface capacity.

WiMAX operators may desire to deploy WiMAX Release 2 air interface and increase capacity on the air interface without changing the core network components. Since network upgrade CAPEX could be considerable relative to the total upgrade cost, it is highly desirable to provide an upgrade path with no impact on the network.

This white paper presents an overview on how to deliver PSTN quality VoIP services over WiMAX networks. The audience for this white paper includes WiMAX network operators and service providers as well as their technical engineers. The white paper describes the technical challenges for supporting VoIP services
over WiMAX networks as highlighted above, as well as technical recommendations on how to address those technical challenges in order to deploy PSTN quality VoIP services over WiMAX networks.

 The WiMAX Forum is accelerating its development efforts to produce Release 2 equipment based on the upcoming IEEE Standard 802.16m [1]. The new release will offer significant coverage and capacity improvements over WiMAX Release 1. The development timeline for Release 2 targets early engineering trials by mid-2011, with WiMAX Forum certification of equipment by the end of 2011, early commercial availability by mid-2012, and general commercial availability with rich terminal offerings in 2013.

India is a huge market for broadband wireless services and offers immediate and enormous potential for growth. WiMAX is the only 4G broadband technology compatible with the 2.3 GHz BWA spectrum in India that today enjoys widespread global deployment along with a mature ecosystem of vendors, devices and applications. It offers Indian consumers both fixed and mobile high speed access to all internet services.

To address the potential WiMAX network capacity constraints, WiMAX equipment and chip vendors, in partnership with WiMAX operators and the WiMAX Forum have launched an initiative to accelerate the adoption of features already supported in IEEE Std 802.16e.

This paper provides an overview of the enhancements incorporated in the IEEE 802.16m amendment and subsequently, WiMAX System Release 2. For the purposes of discussion the planned performance enhancements can be grouped into the following six categories:
• Increased Coverage and Spectral Efficiency
• Increased Capacity for Data and VoIP
• Lower Latency and QoS Enhancements
• Interworking with other Wireless Networks
• Power Conservation
• Other Advanced Features and Supported Services

An earlier WiMAX Forum® white paper provided a very detailed description and performance analysis for WiMAX™ [Ref 1] and a follow-on white paper [Ref 2] provided a comparative analysis of WiMAX with 3G enhancements, EV-DO through Rev B and HSPA through 3GPP Rel-6. For WiMAX™ performance projections, both of those papers assumed a baseline configuration based on the WiMAX Air Interface Release 1.0 profiles.

WMF-T49-001-v01

The deployment of Fixed WiMAX™ networks to address “last mile” broadband access has been highly successful in the last few years, and that model is reasonably well understood. However, the deployment of Mobile WiMAX by existing mobile operators has highlighted some important questions, the answers to which this paper provides high level direction.

Vertical applications present a huge new market opportunity for WiMAX operators. WiMAX is not the only wireless technology that can support vertical applications, but it is particularly well suited to delivering them because of its high capacity, low per-bit cost, and Quality of Service (QoS), and security capabilities.