Fixed & Mobile WiMax

Sean Maloney , executive vice president and general manager of the mobility group Intel, said his engineers are working on putting Wi-Fi and WiMax on the same radio chip, code-named Ofer, in three years. This is a major move by Intel into popularizing WiMax in the same way they did with Wi-Fi, a technology that delivers much wider coverage than Wi-Fi.

There are two usage model for WiMax in Metro-Access Deployment - Fixed & Mobile. The IEEE 802.16-2004 standard is designed for fixed-access usage models. This standard may be referred to as “fixed wireless” because it uses a mounted antenna at the subscriber’s site. The antenna is mounted to a roof or mast, similar to a satellite television dish. This technology provides a wireless alternative to the cable modem and digital subscriber lines of any type (xDSL).

The IEEE 802.16e standard is an amendment to the 802.16-2004 base specification and targets the mobile market by adding portability and the ability for mobile clients with IEEE 802.16e adapters to connect directly to the WiMAX network to the standard. The 802.16e standard is expected to be ratified in early 2005 and uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA).

Source: Redherring