WiMAX, an industry group dedicated to IEEE 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN wireless broadband standards for last-mile access, announced 18 new member companies and the completion of initial system profiles for the interoperability of products operating in the 2 to 11 GHz bands.
WiMAX is focusing its initial efforts on conformance and interoperability test procedures for equipment that supports the 256 OFDM physical layer and operates in 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz licensed bands and the 5.8 GHz unlicensed band. By the end of 2003, the group expects to have developed conformance test plans and selected certification labs. The first interoperability events for equipment vendors are targeted for 2004.
New WiMAX members include: Andrew Corporation, Atheros, China Motion Technologies, Compliance Certification Services, LCC International, News IQ, Powerwave Technologies, Redline Communications, RF Integration, RF Magic, SiWave, SiWorks, SR Telecom, Stratex Networks, TowerStream, TurboConcept, Wavesat Wireless and Winova Wireless.
Existing members include: Airspan Networks, Alvarion, Aperto Networks, Ensemble Communications, Fujitsu, Intel, OFDM Forum, Nokia, Proxim and Wi-LAN.
http://www.wimaxforum.org
- The new 802.16a technology, which is being dubbed “WiMAX�?, provides up to 50 km (31 miles) of linear service area range and allows users to get broadband connectivity without needing a direct line of sight to the base station. It provides shared data rates up to 70 Mbps, which is enough bandwidth to simultaneously support more than 60 businesses with T1-type connectivity and hundreds of homes with DSL-type connectivity using a single sector of a base station. A typical base station has up to six sectors.
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The IEEE 802.16 Air Interface Standard is a point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access standard for systems in the frequency range 10-66 GHz. The standard covers both the Media Access Control (MAC) and the physical (PHY) layers. Work is underway on an amendment to extend the specification to cover both the licensed and unlicensed bands in the 2-11 GHz range. More information on 802.16 is available from the IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access Standards. http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/802/16/