Fixed WiMAX, based on 802.16d-2004, is a stationary technology with customer premises equipment (CPE) and antennas installed in a fixed location, even though some vendors have included portability and limited mobility into their equipment. Only with 802.16e-2005 and Mobile WiMAX comes the capability of mobile units to hand off between base stations. True mobility is therefore enabled in addition to what 802.16d-2004 already features.

The management of different duplexing modes, AAS, and service flow provisioning (among others...) are already included in the d-2004 standard, and new items such as OFDMA sub-channelization techniques, hand off sessions and management of the multicast/broadcast service have to be supported to be compliant with the e-2005 version. WiMax evolves from OFDM-256 FFT to S-OFDMA, so must radio network design methodologies. This white paper highlights the different functionalities of ICS telecom dedicated to network design in OFDMA environment.

What is mobile WiMax ?

Mobile WiMAX is a rapidly growing broadband wireless access technology based on IEEE 802.16-2004 and IEEE 802.16e-2005 air-interface standards. The WiMax forum is developing mobile WiMAX system profiles that define the mandatory and optional features of the IEEE standard that are necessary to build a mobile WiMAX compliant air interface which can be certified by the WiMAX Forum.

Mobile WiMAX is not the same as IEEE 802.16e-2005, rather a subset of the IEEE STD 802.16 standard features and functionalities. The WiMAX Forum Network Working Group (NWG) is developing the higher-level networking specifications for Mobile WiMAX systems beyond what is defined in the IEEE 802.16 standard that simply addresses the air interface specifications. The combined effort of IEEE 802.16 and the WiMAX Forum help define the end-to-end system solution for a Mobile WiMAX network.