The IEEE says it wants to develop a “competitive” and “significantly improved” radio access technology that is “compliant with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) R/IMT advanced requirements for 4G” while maintaining interoperability with mobile WiMax.
This will mean up to 1-Gbit/s fixed and 100-Mbit/s data transfer rates and “improved broadcast and multicast and VOIP performance and capacity.”
The muscle behind 802.16m will be multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology on top of an OFDM-based radio system just like the upcoming “Wave 2″ mobile WiMax products being plotted by several silicon vendors. The Wave 2 profile is expected to achieve mobile speeds of around 5 Mbit/s by using a two-by-two antenna array. 802.16m could up those speeds, in part, by using larger antenna arrays.
Insiders suggest that the latest work on the 802.16 and WiMax technologies is increasingly being driven by the wants and desires of carriers plotting next-generation mobile networks that will combine VOIP services with a hefty dose of whiz-bang multimedia services — such as IPTV, streaming video, and fast music downloads.
Some folks worry that carriers have unrealistic expectations on how fast new WiMax profiles and interfaces can be developed. “They just walk in, snap their fingers, and expect it to happen,” one industry source told us on the show floor yesterday.
Nonetheless — despite possible future bumps in the road for 802.16m — the move to develop a faster spec comes even before products based on the current mobile WiMax specification are generally available. This once again indicates the way certain parts of the industry are trying to aggressively push WiMax forward as the only the possible choice for future 4G networks.
The Project Planning Committee is being led by Brian Kiernan. Further discussion of comment preparation was deferred to the Project Planning Committee.
Meanwhile AT&T, which just sold its 2.5 GHz spectrum to Clearwire for $300M, has been pushing the WiMAX Forum to start work on a so-called “wave three” mobile WiMax profile. AT&T wants a mandated “four-by-four” smart antenna array to increase the speed and capacity, perhaps for mobile tv. By contrast, upcoming “Wave 2″ WiMax products use a two-by-two antenna setup, says Unstrung.
A Mobile PlugFest was held last week in Malaga, Spain. It provided an opportunity to test Mobile WiMAX interoperability between some 35 companies prior to the official WiMAX Forum certification process, scheduled for mid-year.
Cellular operators are plotting the next stage for 3G, referred to as 3G Plus or, incorrectly, as 4G, but the standards setters at the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have dubbed it Long-Term Evolution (LTE), reports EE Times.
LTE also pushes mobile broadband to a theoretical 100 Mbits/second for downlink and 50 Mbits/s for uplink–well beyond what HSPA (the combination of HSDPA and its uplink counterpart, HSUPA) will be able to offer in a year or so.
Cellular’s LTE deployment is expected between late 2009 and 2011, the same time frame as the newly proposed 802.16m Mobile WiMAX standard. LTE may “once and for all, draw the line” between the evolutionary path of the existing network infrastructure and the WiMax-based mobile broadband promoted by new entrants. Or it may not.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Battle for ?4G?, 3G Congress Talks Back, 3GSM World Congress, Mobile WiMAX PlugFest and Moto WiMAX: Going Mobile.
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