Technical Description
WiMAX technology is a worldwide wireless networking standard that addresses interoperability across IEEE 802.16* standard-based products. WiMAX technology offers greater range and bandwidth than the wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) family of standards and provides a wireless alternative to wired backhaul and last mile deployments that use Data over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) cable modems, Digital Subscriber Line technologies (xDSL), T-carrier and E-carrier (T-x/E-x) systems, and Optical Carrier Level (OC-x) technologies.
WiMAX technology can reach a theoretical 30-mile coverage radius and achieve data rates up to 75 Mbps, although at extremely long range, throughput is closer to the 1.5 Mbps performance of typical broadband services (equivalent to a T-1 line), so service providers are likely to provision rates based on a tiered pricing approach, similar to that used for wired broadband services.
The original WiMAX system was designed to operate at 10-66 GHz and it had to change to offer broadband wireless access (BWA) in the 2-11 GHz frequency range.
To do this, the WiMAX standard includes variants (profiles) that use different combinations of radio channel types (single carrier –vs- multicarrier), modulation types, channel coding types to provide fixed, nomadic or portable services.
WiMAX can provide multiple types of services to the same user with different Quality of Service (QoS) levels. For example, it is possible to install a single WiMAX transceiver in an office building and provide real time telephone services and best effort Internet browsing services on the same WiMAX connection. To do this, WiMAX was designed to mix contention based (competitive access) and contention free (polled access) to provide services which have different quality of service (QoS) levels.
WiMAX protocols are designed to allow for point to point (PTP), point to multipoint (PMP) and mesh networks. Operators can use