WiMax won’t grab the brass ring for fourth-generation cellular systems, reports EE Times, but it is likely to capture a healthy minority stake in that emerging sector.
That was the assessment at the Wireless Communications Association meeting last week. Even WiMax proponents like Intel admitted that Long Term Evolution (LTE), a follow-on to cellular’s GSM standard, will command the lion’s share of fourth-generation cellular systems. GSM service providers are expected to move their subscribers to LTE when the time comes. But LTE is still being defined.
“There are 122 commercial wideband-CDMA networks, with 70 million subscribers, operating in 55 countries and using 407 distinct handsets today”, reported Jake MacLeod, chief technology officer of Bechtel Communications. “There’s a huge momentum for existing wireless services,” said MacLeod, whose company builds public networks for carriers. By contrast, no carriers have deployed the 802.16e mobile WiMax spec officially defined at last year’s WCA meeting. That’s because carriers decided they wanted to deploy a second-generation version of the spec supporting the same multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology that will be used in LTE and in rival technology under development at Qualcomm (802.20).
Systems for that version of WiMax won’t be certified and available until late this year. In addition, the technology faces nagging spectrum debates that impede some uses.
MacLeod said carriers Sprint Nextel, startup Clearwire and Russia’s Sistema have committed to WiMax, while Cingular and Vodafone are backing LTE. AT&T, BT and Verizon may use WiMax as an adjunct to their fiber-to-the-home deployments, and satellite broadcasters are considering WiMax as a back channel, he added.
“We will be demonstrating .16e around the end of the year to show our customers we have this capability, but real deployments are two to three years out for most customers,” said Majed Sifri, chief executive of systems maker Redline Communications.
Like most WiMax systems companies, Redline is focusing its 2007 business on deploying fixed-access systems using the 802.16d standard in developing countries as an alternative to digital subscriber lines. Nevertheless, Sifri said that “two-thirds of our engineers are now focused on .16e.”
Meanwhile, WiMAX keeps plugging ahead:
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Navini Networks announced it has ported its MIMO and beam-forming technology to its mobile WiMax gear. The company uses a group of eight antennas in a 2 x 4 MIMO arrangement along with proprietary algorithms running on Texas Instruments DSPs to achieve an extra 9 to 18 dB for its link budget, said Yasser Hannush, product-marketing manager for Navini.
- Chad Pralle, vice president of marketing for SR Telecom, a WiMax system maker, said his company expects to see versions of Intel’s Rosedale-2 chip set as early as February that implement both .16d and .16e.
- Other conference goers said the United States should open up use of WiMax at 700 MHz, where new spectrum will be available after the government reclaims analog broadcast TV airwaves in February 2009.
- China is testing a potential rival to WiMAX that may see its debut in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Their narrowband TD-SCDMA will offer nomadic broadband. It uses CDMA rather than OFDM of WiMAX. Using 5MHz of radio frequency in the 1.8GHz band, a single base station can achieve throughput of 15 megabits per second for 1 to 3 kilometers in an urban setting, or an aggregate of 45 megabits in a three base station sector.Using the 400MHz band, its reach ranges from 20 to 60 kilometers (12-37 miles) in rural settings, where it is being used to connect remote villages to Internet based government services, reports EE Times.
That implys 700 MHz may have a range somewhere in the 8-20 mile range (more with external antennas).
