Wimax Forum

From now on, we would be going into the depths of Wimax. But first, there is a good comparison of the existing wireless standards, I have displayed at the top of this blog. The wimax row is encircled in red. Notice that LTE is much much higher in throughput than the Wimax. Neways, we are not going to talk about the LTE here, we are loyal to wimax :)

Okay, today I will talk about the operating frequency bands of the mobile Wimax. I will also introduce the Wimax forum. It should be noted that the IEEE only makes the standard- It only talks about the PHY and MAC. What lies behind is specified by the the Wimax Forum. WiMAX Forum is a non profit organization formed to promote the adoption of WiMax compatible products and services. It is the job of the Wimax Forum to ensure interoperability among the devices from different vendors. Wimax Forum also dictates the band of operations, various PHY and MAC profiles to be included in the releases and over all architecture of the Wimax network. Those who passes the conformance and interoperability test can claim their product is "Wimax certified". Others adopt names like "WiMAX-ready", "WiMAX-compliant", or "pre-WiMAX", if they are not certified by the Wimax Forum.

Wimax Forum talks about the band of operation in terms of system profiles. Currently, only two system profiles are being certified: 1)2.4 - 2.6 Ghz 2)3.3 - 3.5 Ghz for the 10 Mhz band. I have also heard that the 700 Mhz profile is also being introduced, the auction for which has already been taken place in North America. The frequency plays a major role in the success of Wimax, as the range decreases rapidly with the increase in operating frequency, it will be good to operate at lower frequency in rural areas. I have a cellular phone which works in a 1800 Mhz band, and trust me I hardly get any signal inside my home. I have to go out to make a decent quality call. Products for both the profile are already available in the market. I will post a related document soon. In my next blog, I will talk about the network architecture and MAC layers of the Wimax.