A freshly shaven Roger Marks (left), chair of IEEE 802.16, will speak today, Wednesday, 14th July, 2004, 6:00 PM ~ 8:30 PM at the Oregon Graduate Institute, Wilson Clark Center 20000 NW Walker Rd, Beaverton, OR 97006.
The IEEE-sponsored event will overview the 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access. With this work completed, 802.16 has been chartered to extend its standard to address mobile terminals as well. This talk provides an overview of the 802.16 technology, which is based on a QoS-oriented point-to-multipoint medium access control layer with an optional mesh topology and both single-carrier and OFDM physical layers (see: IEEE Scores 802.16d).
DailyWireless took a break from the IEEE Convention this morning but will attend this evenings talk and are anxious to hear how The Catfight on TV Broadband is going.
Roger Marks said the 802.16 committee, which started in 1998 with 40 people now has attendees from 21 countries and may total close to 500 people this week. The organization has produced about 2,000 documents, most of which are on their website, www.wirelessman.org.
Marks said while the 802.16 spec is defined, not all the features have (yet) been implemented; mesh nodes, for example.
Marks welcomed the large Korean involvement in 802.16e. He said the experience and expertise of the Koreans had contributed substantially to the evolving 802.16e (mobility) standard, now working its way through the standards process. Marks said the Korean Wi-Bro standard (previously known as Hpi), at 2.3 GHz, is developing around 802.16′s own Multiple Access mode (with 2,000 OFDM carriers), although he expressed skeptism about the market need to provide 1Mbps while moving down the road.
This seems to be somewhat at odds with the reaction of Wi-Max chairman (and Intel employee), Ron Resnick (see Dailywireless article). DailyWireless asked Marks about Intel’s projections of separate outdoor, indoor and mobile client phases. Marks said he did not know what Intel’s plans were. DailyWireless speculated that Intel’s “indoor” clients might utilize MIMO antennas, and Marks said it was a “possibility”.
Progress on the “mobilized” 802.20 standards group has been slow, according to Marks, who noted that carriers like Sprint were joining 802.16. Chances that 802.20 and 802.16e uniting in a same sex marriage seemed slim to none. Marks said the .16 group could pride itself in bringing 802.20 to it’s first consensus — rejecting 802.16e as a mobile broadband solution.
When asked by DailyWireless about the dispute over forming a separate group (currently called 802.22) to develop a standard for broadband in television frequencies, Marks said his opinion is that they should confine their work to developing the “cognitive radio” section. That unique part could then be folded into the other layers of 802.16 and other standards.
The 802.16e Working Group wrote to the Executive Committee Tuesday, stressing their believe that the air interface should not be developed in a separate committee:
The 802.16 Working Group disagrees with the extension of the scope to include the development of a specific air interface technology. We believe that the PAR s attempt to join these two factors cognitive radio and a VHF/UHF air interface into one project is inappropriate. These issues should remain separate.
Currently, Airspan’s ASWipLL platform can use the 700 MHz band but it doesn’t incorporate a “cognitive radio” standard to sense and avoid any interfering television channels.
About 150 people attended the free lecture by Marks at the Oregon IEEE-sponsored event. A transcript of the meeting will be archived on that space shortly.
– Sam Churchill
