IEEE Workshop on WiMAX

The IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Santa Clara Valley Society organized its annual Short Course titled “WiMAX: Opportunities, Challenges and Concepts”, on Saturday 19 April 2008 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Auditorium.

Here are some of the highlights from the sessions:

Dr. Mohammed Sayed set the ball rolling with an introduction to the Workshop.

Delivering the keynote address titled, “WiMAX Technology Infrastructure Overview”, Intel Fellow Dr.Siavash Alamouti  made an interesting case in favor of WiMAX over even LTE.
   - The next killer app: “anything that internet can provide and more”
   - If the future is all about mobile internet and ubiquitous access, then it is not about phones but about PCs that can
      provide a better experience to the user.
   - The walled gardens have lead to the failure of 3G.
   - The cell-phone world’s approach to providing high-speed data access just does not scale.
   - WiMAX has the potential to deliver, lives up to its hype.
   - Intel is forging ahead with its MID plans with WiFi/WiMAX chipsets.
   - The industry is finally moving away from TDMA/CDMA to OFDM + MIMO.
   - Comparing WiMAX and LTE: even though both end up in IP, one would go through more layers and 
      proprietary protocols in case of the LTE.

Dr. Mohammed Shakouri of Alvarion, also the Chair of Marketing Working Group, WiMAX Forum spoke on the WiMAX Industry Trends. He gave a succinct snapshot of the current WiMAX scenario worldwide.
   - The WiMAX Forum now has about 530 members and that there are about 281 service providers currently working
      across the globe to deliver WiMAX services.
   - About 133 Million WiMAX users by 2013 (which is a higher number than the 80 Million in a previous post of mine)
   - With its internet business model with mobility, currently 3G and WiMAX can peacefully coexist.
   - But, will LTE and WiMAX coexist?

Presenting the business case for WiMAX, Doug Gray, a consultant to the WiMAX Forum covered aspects of deployment, estimating capacity requirements, CAPEX breakdowns and the sensitivity analysis with examples.
   - The spectrum licensing costs are actually a tiny fraction of the big picture.
   - Mobile WiMAX offers a base station solution at a low cost per Megabit.
   - It supports multiple usage models with multiple applications.
   - Mobile WiMAX significantly reduces the base station requirements in regions with high subscriber density.
   - On a per customer basis, the infrastructure cost would rise by more than $500 for a ‘greenfield’ operator instead
      of say, Sprint.

This was followed by a panel which was asked to provide their views on “WiMAX in 2013″.
   - Dr.Shakouri: flat rates would be most common five years from now
   - Tom Tofigh disagreed. He felt that flat rates would work for some while others would be willing to pay premium rates
      for customized services. He also called for seamless applications to work across different networks and devices.
   - Phil Lorch of Agilent was convinced that WiMAX has disruptive capability since it was built from grassroots.

The second half of the day was kicked off by Dr Raymond Pengelly of Cree Wireless Devices who spoke about the potential of GaN Transistors for amplifiers in WiMAX base stations.

This was followed by Tom Tofigh who chairs the WiMAX Forum Application Working Group, who spoke on “An Open Architecture for Application Deployment over WiMAX”. An end to end solution for WiMAX applications would work, with open platforms, open devices giving rise to interesting aspects such as role of QoE (Quality of Experience), multiple service classes, etc. A lot of very interesting opportunities are coming up to tap into the potential of moving from networking of networks to service based networks.  I found his talk very engaging and well-researched.

David Huynh of Agilent wrapped it up with an introduction to the WiMAX Wave 2 testing, MIMO and Space Time Coding and a demo of the Agilent products/capabilities to testing WiMAX systems. In summary, it was a very well organized, informative and interactive day on a very hot topic. The setting provided for a number of interesting conversations which will lead me to more blog posts on related topics. Stay tuned. You can find details of the event, download presentations and check out the photos from the website of IEEE MTT Santa Clara Valley Society.

I would like to thank Dr. Mohammed Sayed for inviting me to this workshop. The event was sponsored by Agilent, Applied Wave Research, Computer Simulation Technology, MC Microwave, Rohde & Schwarz and Zeland Software.