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WiMAX 2.0 SIGNIFYING THE NEXT GENERATION OF WiMAX

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Abstract
The last three decade of technological advancement and worldwide adoption of wireless networks have been phenomenal, bringing us through basic analog rst generation (1G) to the now high-speed digital fourth generation (4G) systems. Providing us with increased data transfer rates that make VoIP, real-time information sharing, video streaming and data-intensive applications possible today, delivering mobility which users have come to expect through wireless devices. Continuous improvements in semiconductor and computing technologies are providing great encouragement to the industry and consumers to automatically anticipate whats next. The dawn of 4G is fast coming into reality with over 583(1) WiMAX and 105(2) LTE networks deployed to date. As we move towards embracing this adoption either by choice or by chance, there is much debate especially amongst the WiMAX service provider community as to which technology camp to adopt. Much of this can be attributed to the breadth of technology covered under the 4G banner, the wide range of business interests involved in creating the 4G vision and the various progression path of making 4G real. The purpose of this paper is to: Summarize the current state of Wireless Broadband & Networking Present the next decade of change installed for WiMAX State key 4G device requirements

1WiMAX Forum : Monthly Industry

Report, May 2011

2GSA : GSA Evolution To LTE Report,

Oct 2012

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Contents
The Current State of Wireless Networking Going Beyond 3G WiMAX in Focus 01

The Next Decade for WiMAX The Path to 4G Connecting People - WiMAX in 4G The Path to M2M Connecting Machines - WiMAX in M2M

06

4G Requirements for Device

14

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The Current State of Wireless Networking - 01

The Current State of Wireless Networking

Business is increasingly becoming a mobile activity, and as a result, the wireless networks and services used to support those developments are growing in importance. In both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) environments, the availability of more reliable, higher-capacity wireless data networks allow the expanding reach of business into the mobile environment. The evolution of our public wireless networks can be depicted in four distinct generations, each of which is characterized by a number of key technical innovations that resulted to specic commercial impact. The early First Generation systems comprise of independently-developed systems worldwide like Analogue Mobile Phone System (AMPS), used in America, Total Access Communication System (TACS), used in parts of Europe, Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT), used in parts of Europe and Japanese Total Access Communication System (J-TACS), used in Japan and Hong Kong. The use of analogue technology were conned within national boundaries attracting only a small number of users, as the equipment was expensive, cumbersome and power-hungry, and therefore was only practical in a vehicle that is able to provide a power source. The Second Generation digital systems known as Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) brought about noticeable change, propelling wireless telecommunication further by making global roaming possible, due in part by the collaborative spirit in which it was developed under the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). GSM became a robust, interoperable and widely-accepted standard. Fuelled by advances in mobile handset technology, which resulted in small, fashionable terminals with long battery life. The widespread acceptance of the GSM standard became near-universal, rst in the developed world with voice and text, then later through the introduction of basic data services. Meanwhile in the developing world, GSM begin connecting communities and individuals in remote regions where xed-line connectivity was nonexistent and would be cost prohibitive to deploy.

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The Current State of Wireless Networking - 02

This ubiquitous availability and user-friendliness sparked practical consumer reliance and increased demand, thus providing the industry with encouragement for continuous progression. Over the last decade, expansion of service provisioning grew beyond voice and leans heavily towards packet-switched data with the development of numerous Third Generation technologies, dominated mainly by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP & 3GPP2) family of technologies which sparked the Wireless Broadband race. Introduced in the early days of 2002, the second path of evolution of wireless broadband emerged, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802 LAN/MAN standard committee created the 802.16 standard or more commonly known as WiMAX. While the rst version 802.16-2004 was restricted to xed access, the following version 802.16e and often referred to as mobile WiMAX, includes basic support of mobility. In later years, the International Standards Union (ITU) listed WiMAX as an ofcial IMT-2000 technology, and based on latest adjustments made to the 4G denition, confers mobile WiMAX as Fourth Generation (4G), although debated by certain camps to be more betting as 3.9G with its next iteration of 802.16m (an IMT-Advance standard) ofcially as 4G. Nevertheless, WiMAX has since 2008, gained popular recognition globally as a wireless broadband technology standard. Continuing the technology progression within the 3GPP technology family, Long Term Evolution (LTE) emerged as its latest technology standard to complete the trend of expansion of service provision towards multiservice air interface. Relatively new to market, LTE has rapidly moved from the early stages of deployment, to demonstrate its commercial applicability and t by a broad set of global operator segments within varying spectrums. Recognizing these developments, the wireless industry is now aligning itself to take advantage of these advancements. Identifying LTE as the principle wireless platform positioned to drive the next decade of wireless networks. Ultimately, operator networks will support an all IP-based framework as specied in 3GPP and 3GPP2 standards. Similarly to that extent, WiMAX, previously a rival technology would follow suit and integrate the support of both WiMAX and 3GPP TD-LTE standards.

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The Current State of Wireless Networking - 03

The evolution of wireless cellular standards

2G 3GPP2 CDMA
(IS-95A)

2.5G CDMA
(IS-95B)

3G CDMA 2000 E-GPRS EDGE WCDMA FDD/TDD TD-SCDMA LCR/TDD

3.5G 1xEVDO Rel 0/A/B

3.9G UMB 802.20 LTE E-UTRA

4G

GSM 3GPP TDMA

(IS-136)

GPRS

LTE Advance

HSDPA FDD/TDD HSUPA FDD/TDD HSPA+

IEEE 802.16 IEEE IEEE 802.11b 1995 802.11a 2000 802.11g

Fixed WiMAX 802.16d Mobile WiMAX 802.16e WiBRO 802.11h 802.11n 2010

WiMAX 802.16m

2015

TDMA/FDMA

CDMA

OFDM

Going Beyond 3G
GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA and HSPA is the technology stream of choice for the vast majority of the worlds mobile operators, typically offering commercial downlink speeds of 1-5Mbps with expectation that beyond 10Mbps per user will be widely available in the near future. From a standardization perspective, 3G work is now well-advanced and, while improvements continue to be made to maximize performance from currently deployed systems, there is a limit to the extent to which further enhancements will be effective. If the motivations were to deliver higher performance, then this in itself would be relatively easy to achieve. The added complexity is that such improved performance must be delivered through systems which are cheaper to install and maintain. Dramatic reduction in telecommunications charges and increase in capability is expected. Therefore, in deciding the next standardization step, there must be a dual approach of seeking considerable performance improvement but at reduced cost.

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Cost Decreased latency

The Current State of Wireless Networking - 04

Relative cost per bit of transmitted data

100 80 60 40 20

Increased spectrum efciency Increased peak throughput Increased capacity per cell Flexible spectrum usage Robust security Flexible interoperability and integration More..

3G

3.5G

HSPA

WiMAX

LTE

Technology

3.9G/4G

The road to migration is inevitable, depending on the maturity of the wireless network ecosystem, viability, cost and variety of consumer devices including service competitiveness. As more and more mobile data-centric and mobility driven applications inuence the carrier service provider business models, it will quicken their path to LTE beyond 3G enhancements of HSPA and HSPA+. With the arrival of LTE and widespread promotion as substitute for WiMAX is a little unsettling for Greeneld operators that have invested in WiMAX systems and looking for long term protability. Nevertheless, pockets of WiMAX market remains strong in the xed applications in emerging markets, rural markets in developed countries and niche applications such as vertical markets in relation to utility. For many small and medium size businesses, WiMAX is still an exciting prospect in ways, as it promises good wireless access and bandwidth boundaries. But the adoption of WiMAX for service providers are betting only if the investment exposure in multiple wireless standards can signicantly impact supply chain expenditures of equipment vendors, component vendors, operators and eventually subscribers.

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WiMAX in Focus

The Current State of Wireless Networking - 05

WiMAX was the earlier conceived technology available to bring about enabling wireless broadband, on which future mobile telecommunications system architecture will be built. Several incremental improvements and innovation in radio technology and command-and-control software have seen the WiMAX standard releasing higher and higher variants of mobile WiMAX in the form of releases such as Release 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0. The latter two, release 1.5 (802.16e Rev 2) and 2.0 (802.16m) representing short-term and long-term evolution respectively.

Release 1.0
ASN anchored mobility, 3 ASN pro les CSN anchored mobility CMIP, PMIP IPv4 & optional IPv6 Idle mode and paging EAP-based authentication Mobile, portable, nomadic, xed Pre-provisioned/static QoS Pre- and Post-paid RADIUS Accounting Roaming (RADIUS only) O&M Features Network discovery/selection Load balancing

Release 1.5
Persistent scheduling for reduced MAC overhead

Release 2.0
Reduced Latency Multihop Relays Self-organizing capability (SON) Enhanced VoIP support Enhanced MCBCS (both static and dynamic multicasting) Enhancements to LBS Mobility: up to 500 km/hr Backward compatibility

Femto Cell introduction Load balancing BF+MIMO , UL MIMO (optional) GPS & non-GPS based location services Enhanced Multicast & Broadcast services ( MCBCS APP and DSx) Wimax-WiFi-Bluetooth coexistence Ethernet services Public Safety & emergency services O & M Features OTA pre-provisioning & device management ( OMA & TR69) PCC /PCRF ( Dynamic QoS and policy based charging) USI ( Universal service interface) WIMAX SIM ROHC Lawful intercept

Key features in the evolution of Mobile WiMAX

Commercially, WiMAX has revolutionized the delivery of wireless broadband, being the high performance, robust and cheaper alternative to 3G and wireline networks. Enabling vast formations of new Greeneld operators and playing a profound role to enable communication (simple xed and nomadic voice) and Internet services to reach vastly across developing and rural markets (majority of deployments) previously underserved. Yet, further steps of renement and market diversication must surely follow in the midst of the equally domineering LTE camp. In many aspects, WiMAX fundamentals share common characteristics to TD-LTE. Take for example, the modulation technique of OFDM, where the spectrum is multiplexed in time division (TD) duplex where the uplink and downlink is a time-shared method that is spectrum efcient. Similarly, TD-LTE offers key technical advantages in antenna system techniques of MIMO and beamforming, which is also supported in WiMAX. With both uplink and downlink on the same frequency, these technologies render simplicity and inexpensive implementation that is inherently efcient. As ITU and 3GPP/3GPP2 standards have now included TD method as a formal part of the specications to which TD-LTE nds its place in the 4G infrastructure increasingly in China, India and parts of Asia. This also means WiMAX systems are closer to a smooth migration to TD-LTE and can still nd relevance among the mainstream service offerings. While WiMAX service providers are getting involved in ensuring their systems are in working order, so are WiMAX chipset vendors like Sequans and Altair are ready to offer TD-LTE chipsets.

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The Next Decade for WiMAX - 06

The Next Decade for WiMAX

The Path To 4G Connecting People
ITU as the authority to dene what constitutes 4G clearly intended to have the standard alter the paradigm of user-network interaction, where broadband can be made available to consumer devices. Essentially eliminating the need for the user to know anything about the network (operator, topology, radio or technology), achieving the Always Best Connected experience. To achieve IMT-Advances vision of various access systems

interconnected to provide services in a cooperative manner, ITU denes layers of network based on the geographic scope of coverage and extent of mobility offered by each layer. Interactions among these networks are not limited to intra-network (horizontal) or inter-network (vertical) handoffs for service continuity, but encompass complex functions of billing, security, privacy, Quality of Service (QoS), fault tolerance and recovery with the following key attributes: Network Discovery and Selection A subscriber terminal that features multiple radio technologies and intelligent connectivity management software that allows participation/presence in multiple networks simultaneously. Connecting to the best network with the most appropriate service parameters (QoS, QoE and capacity among others) for the application. Terminal Mobility and Service Continuity A network that features intra- and inter-technology handovers, assuring service continuity with zero or minimal interruption, without a noticeable loss in service quality - Continuous transparent maintenance of active service instances and inclusion of various access technologies, from Wi-Fi to OFDMA. Support for Multiple Applications and Services Efcient support for unicast, multicast and broadcast services and the applications that rely on them.

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The Next Decade for WiMAX - 07

Quality of Service Consistent application of admission control and scheduling algorithms regardless of underlying infrastructure and operator diversity.

Technology and Topology Independence Service capability that is not constrained by topology or technology limitations, but rather achieve the Always Best Connected characteristic.

Distribution Layer

Complimentary access systems

Full coverage Global access Full mobility Not necessary individual links

Cellular Layer

Full coverage & Hotspots Global roaming Full mobility Individual links

Hotspot Layer

Local coverage Hotspots Global roaming Local mobility Individual links

Personal Network Layer

Short range communication Global roaming Individual links

Fixed (Wired) Layer

Global access Personal mobility

Horizontal: Handover within a system

Vertical: Handover between systems

Possible return channel

The vision of 4G is a framework for an advanced infrastructure consisting of architecture, core technologies and open interfaces for building, deploying and providing applications to achieve ubiquitous, converged broadband services.

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WiMAX in 4G

The Next Decade for WiMAX - 08

WiMAX framework has the fundamental technological building blocks to support the vision of 4G and its framework. The standard has been proven commercially, giving operators globally the opportunity to launch wireless broadband services, but predominantly serving the xed and nomadic segment. The lack of penetration into the mobile segment is premised on the basis that WiMAX was not designed with the same emphasis on mobility and compatibility with operators core network as the 3GPP technology family, which includes core network evolution in addition to the radio access network evolution. Nevertheless, 802.16m, the next iteration in the WiMAX roadmap has enhancements outlined that are geared towards provisioning of new services including worldwide roaming and interworking /compatibility with other technologies, aimed at increasing seamless user experience in an all IP framework. But, technology alone does not dictate adoption. The challenge for 802.16m lies on its capability to attract sufcient market support from chipset manufacturers, equipment vendors (infrastructure and device) and the operator community. With WiMAX Forums willingness to integrate elements of TD-LTE standards within its platform, the transition from WiMAX to TD-LTE will help bridge the divide between differing technology camps with a level of comfort and quell doubts of incompatibility. No need to single out any technology, but benet from co-existence. The openness of the roadmap evolution supports harmonization to allow operators to adopt dual or multiple radio access technologies within their service offerings. The commercial availability of LTE, which has close similarity to WiMAX, especially for its time-division LTE (TD-LTE) version have sparked serious interest, largely due to the wider overall support for this new technology ranging from network infrastructure, device, chipsets, technology roadmap development and host of downstream supply chains. Clearly, the TD-LTE is popular with WiMAX operators like Packet One Networks in Malaysia, Clearwire in the US and Yota in Russia. That aside, given that TD-LTE services entering mainstream, simply for the reasons of plentiful and decent spectrum prices alongside FD-LTE to augment dual-mode coverage. It is a matter of time, before the device and chipset multimode roadmaps gain inuence and are sufciently available.

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The Next Decade for WiMAX - 09

WiMAX operators are also learning that future subscriber and average revenue per user (ARPU) growth is not limited to just a xed wireless replacement, offering traditional data packages for a xed fee. Rather, bundled data services that combine recursive xed at-home and high value mobile on-the-go packages, leading to greater revenue and draw out value from data services such as mobile, video, music, games, Internet access, navigation and messaging. Market forces are signaling WiMAX service providers and vendors to evolve and adapt business models to support the 4G vision in the coming decade. Emphasizing on advanced infrastructure consisting of architecture, core technologies and open interfaces for building, deploying and providing applications to achieve ubiquitous, converged broadband service either: Building a loosely coupled heterogeneous network Evolving the WiMAX network by adopting some degree of system interworking, primarily with a 3G and/or LTE service provider through a form of collaboration. An evolution option well suited for WiMAX operators with limited spectrum holding. Key integration attributes includes provisioning and billing, with handover/connectivity selection mostly managed via multimode devices. Building a tightly coupled heterogeneous network Evolving the WiMAX network by adopting a converged overlay structure, primarily with LTE as the secondary/primary co-existing network. An evolution option well suited for WiMAX operators with broad spectrum holding. Key integration attributes includes tight integration at the core and application network layer, have advance coordination at the access level with extreme automation through self-organization and cognition and assisted by advance devices with increased degree of coordination capability.

WHITEPAPER The Path To M2M Connecting Machines

The Next Decade for WiMAX - 10

Machine-to-machine communications is an established business that has functioned behind the scenes and drawn little attention in the past. Today, however, M2M is experiencing a period of change and growth. M2Ms resurgence is attributed to the widespread availability of wireless technologies, which make it possible to reach equipment in locations that were too remote or too costly to reach before. The trend is also driven by regulatory incentives to employ M2M in certain markets, such as energy, and entrepreneurial drive to create innovative and consumer-focused solutions in others, such as those listed in the table below.

Security and public safety Smart grid Tracking and tracing Vehicular telematics Payment Healthcare Remote maintenance and control Consumer devices
Potential applications for wireless M2M

Surveillance systems, control of physical access (e.g. buildings), enviromental monitoring (e.g. for natural disasters), backup for landlines. Electricity, gas, water, heating, grid control, industrial metering, demand response. Order management, asset tracking, human monitoring. Fleet management, car/driver security, enhanced navigation, traf c info, tolls, pay as you drive, remote vehicle diagnostics. Point of sale, ATM, vending machines, gaming machines. Monitoring vital signs, supporting the aged or handicapped, web access telemedicine points, remote diagnostics. Industrial automation, sensors, lighting, pump, vending machine control. Digital photo frame, digital camera, ebook, home management hubs.

Despite its allure as a new business opportunity, M2M is a broad eld and hard to categorize. It has many touchpoints from those found at the farthest reaches of the utility grid to vending machines in public places via a variety of wireless technology options, which will be deployed and congured depending on the need at hand. Because of its near-ubiquitous availability, wireless network technologies will nd relevance in many M2M markets. Choosing access technology suitable for M2M applications require strategic considerations in order to assure that it meets the minimum requirements for successful service. Areas encompass specic performance, security, and network management capabilities with the following key attributes:

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The Next Decade for WiMAX - 11

Activation Rates Optimized for the Internet of Things - most M2M applications typically have low throughput requirements as they are only sending small amounts of data, often intermittently or even on an exception-only basis. M2M applications do benet from the ability of the mobile packet gateways to rapidly scale up to a large number (hundreds of thousands or millions) of activations.

Quality-of-Service - Utilities demands on strong Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and require guarantees of reliable network access especially during emergencies.

Fault tolerance and Session Recovery Network architecture designed with stateful geo-redundancy disaster recovery.

IPv6 Support for Network Address Availability - millions to hundreds of millions of new devices are going to be networked in an Internet of Things, an optimal long-term solution is a shift to IPv6, which enables orders of magnitude larger numbers of available IP addresses.

Monitoring and provisioning M2M devices are in majority highly remote, requiring the capability of monitoring events (movement, theft, outage) and having the exibility to provision or follow-up with actions upon event detection.

Low power consumption M2M devices are predominantly requires low power consumption and specic system-device features is required to invoke power saving mechanism (e.g: idle, sleep mode) to optimize power consumption.

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WiMAX in M2M

The Next Decade for WiMAX - 12

WiMAX Mobile Network Operator/ Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MNO/MVNO) believes that the mobile M2M market will undergo an evolution from the general-purpose, mobile network elements to deploy M2M services, to using equipment that has been specically optimized for the needs of the M2M market. Such optimization gives the MNO/MVNO the benet of being able to provide a more intelligent network to their Application Service Provider (ASP) customers and thereby differentiate their connectivity offering, compete more successfully for ASP business, and, ultimately, to garner more revenue from selling connectivity services for M2M applications. In the face of changing wireless network landscape, WiMAX can easily nd its niche and win over other technologies for M2M support. It offers the best value to ASPs by providing the greatest feature/functionality at the lowest cost. The advantages over Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Data Link Control (DLC) and Mesh networks are signicant and compelling enough.

Comparing Access Technologies

WiMAX provides the greatest feature set and fuctionality at the lowest cost Critical Attribute
High Bandwith Suitability for High Customer Densities Suitability for Low Customer Densities Security Standards Based Scalability Large Supplier Ecosystem Reliability Option to Wholesale/Lease System Availability Cost

PLC

DLC

Mesh

WiMAX

Cellular

Source

: Referenced from Motorolas Internal Study

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The Next Decade for WiMAX - 13

While most of these aspects are already well developed in the current WiMAX releases, there exist a small but critical disparity between what is available in a service model of an operator and what is required by a M2M enterprise to fulll its service model. Application development is the most problematic and challenging part for the M2M market. Presently, enterprises tend to use custom designed software to manage data and provision the decision-making and messaging requirements peculiar to M2M systems which are not functionally built in an existing cellular networks system. Fortunately, the WiMAX Forum has formed dedicated working groups to assist in closing these technological and market gaps. Specic features are being streamlined and standardized into WiMAX standards to cater for M2M communications. Engagement focus with industry players, the utility and enterprise community, in particular for smart grid, aviation, oil and gas and Smart Cities are underway to clarify use cases and nd specic collaboration t to expedite the commercialization of WiMAX in M2M. Although still preliminary, WiMAX operators and WiMAX equipment vendors have started to embrace M2M, forming models to serve the sector, treating it as the next new growth area of the decade.

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4G Requirements for Device - 14

4G Requirements for Device

In WiMAX subscriber devices of today, radio is only a small part of device capability. Enhanced user experience is central and service providers tend to market innovative plans for the services and applications that can be supported. But in essence, ubiquitous radio access will be the essential backbone to support the next generation of wireless networks. For mass market 4G applications, device will support a vast number of services with a powerful and complex communications engine. Radios in devices already support WiMAX and Wi-Fi, and in smartphones additionally with cellular, GPS and Bluetooth. International roaming requires devices to support a variety of radios/bands because globally available frequency bands are not consistent. As a result, the RF complexity in the device will increase drastically, requiring radios to support multiple bands and duplexing methods (FDD & TDD). In future, the radios in the device will perform local radio resource management enable and assist with network over resource multiple management. radio access Device support for carrier aggregation and heterogeneous networks could simultaneous communication technologies. The wireless device may also be a gateway for a multitude of sensors and machine type devices that perform spectrum sensing for capturing and analyzing the radio environment. Features to optimize device power consumption will be a key factor in the future as battery capacity improvements are relatively slow compared to the evolution of other technologies.

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Greenpacket, Bringing You 4G Wireless Networking Expertise - 15

Greenpacket, Bringing You 4G Wireless Networking Expertise

Operators around the world have successfully leveraged on WiMAX to start realizing the dream of true Wireless Broadband Freedom. At Greenpacket, we have helped many WiMAX Operators achieve this through our best-in-class and award-winning USB modems and continue to innovate in the sphere of WiMAX + LTE technologies. Let us show you new perspectives on how to effectively extend your success towards a new age 4G Wireless Networking. With Greenpacket, limitless freedom begins now!

Free Consultation If you would like a free consultation on empowering your subscribers with seamless mobility and extending a better connectivity experience, contact us at marketing.gp@greenpacket.com (kindly quote the reference code DWP1112 when you contact us).

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