About Technology

by Shafqat Zia

WiMAX technology is identified as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access; it is formed in June 2001 to encourage conformance and interoperability of the WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) standard, officially known as Wireless Metropolitan Area Network (WMAN). WiMAX technology intended to offer wireless data in a related fashion as compare to WiFi but on a outsized level and speed, therefore building national wireless networks with ease.

The driving forces behind WiMAX technology are link-to-multilink microwave networks from organizations for instance Alcatel and Siemens stay alive for years. Alternatively WiMAX offers a consistent technology according to its standard. WiMAX technology open loom could let product manufacturers make revenues of scale via producing number of WiMAX products & components to single IEEE 802.16 standard, this also allow component manufacturers buy low-cost, standards compliant components from rival component providers. This would defiantly help existing wireless service providers.

In addition, service providers lacking a mobile network can start a WiMAX technology network at comparatively stumpy price. WiMAX technology would also allow interoperability among different systems. WiMAX technology will offer high data speed network connections and in this manner serve as a backhaul for WiFi LAN (WLAN) hot spots, where people on the move can access carriers' WiFi services on mobile technology basis. WiMAX technology possibly will offer a much cheaper, easier to build network infrastructure other than the physical medium of WiFi backhauls that cable, T1 or DSL systems presently offer. These issues, together with user's requirements for broadband facilities, will offer the grounds to markets to grow with WiMAX and wireless-broadband. However, the WiMAX technology faces some solid challenges ahead of it can become commonly accepted by users.

Because WiMAX is based on IEEE 802.16 Standard and HiperMAN, the IEEE and ETSI have each become accustomed it's standard to take in many of the other's essential characteristics. IEEE 802.16 standard partitioned its MAC (Medium Access Control) layer into sub-layers that hold some different transport equipments and technologies, together with Ethernet, IPv4, IPv6 and other asynchronous transfer mode. This allows traders to use WiMAX technology it doesn't matter about what technology they support for transmission. WiMAX technology has a wide communication range up to 50 kilometres because principles allows WiMAX network to transfer data at higher rates and because of this move towards use of directional antennas that generates persistent radio signals. WiMAX base station provide service to only 500 users at a time not more than that just because to they are sharing bandwidth and this factor may result in lower date rates among. Technically every single station will possibly provide communication an area inside a 10 miles radius. On the other hand WiFi has a range of only a few hundred feet while other third generation mobile networks have the range of few thousand feet.

As compare to other wireless standards their address broadcastings over particular frequency range, WiMAX network allocates data communication over several broad signal frequency ranges. The capacity to work in several ranges makes the most of the technology's ability to communicate above the frequencies that will evade interference with other wireless network applications. WiMAX system's communication date rate and range differ a lot depending on implementation usage of frequency bands. These advantages of flexibility allow providers to employ different frequencies that depend on the speed and range needed for a particular data communication. The WiMAX technology attains higher data transmission rates in part by OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). OFDM amplifies data capacity and bandwidth via dividing broad capacity channels to many narrowband channels; every channel uses different frequencies that can transmit different pieces of a message at the same time.

The spaces between channels are extremely close mutually other than avoiding intervention as nearby channels are orthogonal to each other and therefore no overlapping between them. The primary IEEE 802.16 standard uses the 10 to 66 GHz frequency range. On those higher frequencies WiMAX network needed a straight line of sight among senders & receivers. This factor shrinks the multi path distortion that arises when transmitting signals not follow the line of sight echoed of outsized items and finish off out of organization, in this manner jumbling the inbound communication and reducing bandwidth. Dropping multi path distortion could therefore enhance the bandwidth. In theory WiMAX network can offer single channel data rates up to 75 Mbits/s equally on the downlink and uplink. Service providers can use several 802.16 channels for single broadcast to offer bandwidths of up to 350 Mb per second.

The accepted IEEE 802.11b WiFi WLAN technology data rate are limited to 11Mbps, on the other hand newer 802.11a and 802.11g provide upto 54Mbps in favourable conditions but practically all of the them transmit at lesser speed. Third generation mobile network technologies will support around 115 Kbps.

As far as security is concerned in WiMAX technology it uses PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) authentication, which transmit via digital certificates by identifying parties over trusted authorities. The IEEE 802.16 system encrypts data by using 56 bit DES (Data Encryption Standard) keys. In the meantime WiMAX network is extremely scalable as it is simple to include broadcast channels to offer extra bandwidth as required.

The expenditure of setting up wireless technology is significantly increases when the wireless services are supplied at higher frequencies as the line of sight constraints required the setting up of further antennas to cover up the equivalent geographical area. The available frequencies for new wireless standards such as IEEE 802.16 are normally higher as some of the other wireless technologies are more sought-after to lower ranges that have been approved for other use.

During the development of WiMAX technology, the WiMAX Forum has strongly supported and encourage the WiMAX technology, which involves a cluster of commercial leaders such as AT&T, Cisco, Samsung, Intel, and some others giants. The WiMAX forum group's workforce is comprised of many working groups that highly focused on regulatory, marketing, technological characteristics. WiMAX product certification program was extended by the certification working group which intends to certify interoperability among WiMAX products from manufacturers internationally. More on Free WiMAX Info

About the Author

S Zia is the technical editor of Articles on Mobile Computing & Wireless Technologies also Author of http://www.freewimaxinfo.com

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