WiMAX & Wi-Fi, are they in your future?

By the Staff at PBMnetworks

Part 1: For the beginners among us …

 (This is a three part article that describes the emerging broadband wireless landscape. Part one is for the beginners among us, part two takes it to an intermediate level, while part three is for the experts wanting to know the latest on WiMAX)

 

We have all heard the term WiFi, but what does it mean?  Well it’s the broadband wireless technology in your laptop, and probably in your home.  But what is WiMAX? Is WiMax the next generation of WiFi? Is it the next generation of cellular phones? For the beginner, this article will answer these questions, and for the experts, later in the series we will present some of the latest announcements and status of this new technology.

 

What is broadband wireless anyway? We know about “voiceband” wireless. A term I coined to discuss wireless in terms of capability. Voiceband capability is what your cell phone has.  It’s the police two-way radio. It’s your CB radio and cordless phone. Voiceband wireless provides voice as its primary service, or “application.”   

Voice is important.  It’s actually the “killer application” of the 20^th century. Everybody needs it. It’s essentially a utility.  And people also need to move around. If you’ve shopped for a phone in the store recently, you know that cordless phone selection now outnumber wired phones, and increasingly in the home there are more cordless than corded phones. Also, now nearly everybody has a cell phone. Compared to computers, cell phones are twice a popular worldwide. Many people are considering making their cell phone their only phone.  Why?  People want the freedom of wireless mobility. Everybody wants their voiceband cordless phone to be portable or mobile. Voice is still a killer app for the cell phone and PCS companies.

 

So what’s the bandwidth of voiceband wireless … Its a few thousand bits per second – just enough to carry voice.

 

OK, what then is broadband wireless? Broadband wireless, or high speed wireless, is loosely defined as greater than one million bits per second (although there are several differing opinions). At one megabit, you now have the ability to not only carry voice, but high speed data as well. This is the type of bandwidth you experience on your cable modem and DSL connection at home, your “T1”/Ethernet connection at work to your desktop, and soon with broadband wireless technologies, while you are on the move around town.

 

Just like voice was the killer application in the 20^th century, broadband data will be the “killer app” of this century.

What can you do with broadband wireless? Why will it be the killer app? Well everything you do at home or at work on the Internet you do anywhere you have a wireless signal, even while on the move. You can check your bank balance, you can listen to radio stations from around the world, you can receive your favorite entertainment programming and you and receive your email, voicemail, fax and instant messages… you can watch a video news broadcast, or you can even initiate your own video and audio conference. The applications, services, content and utility of mobile broadband wireless is as limitless as the Internet itself.

 

OK, its sounds good, when will it really arrive? And will it be reasonably priced? ... Well that is what this article is all about…  

Let’s take a closer look at something we may be familiar with, the wireless box you purchased to allow your DSL or cable modem at home to connect wirelessly to other computers around your house. Or maybe you have noticed at an airport or other public place that your laptop suddenly informs you “wireless networks are in range”. These networks are known as “WiFi” networks. You can easily set one up in your home. Or an entrepreneur or wireless carrier has set one up in a public “hotspot”. These networks connect your computer at speeds of up to (ideally) 11 megabits to 54 megabits per second one way (and actually, to be accurate, just less than half these speeds for a typical two way exchange of information such as a two way video conference – more on that later). When you are using these wireless networks at home or at a hotspot, you are experiencing broadband wireless connectivity. You are surfing the net, wire-free!

 

Now you will notice that these signals do not travel very far from the access point (AP) that you are connected to. Typically the range of a WiFi AP is about 100 feet to 1000 feet depending on whether or not there are obstacles in the path of the signal, or whether you are inside or outside. This distance is ideal for indoor coverage. One or two APs can cover a home quite well. A large office may need up to one-half dozen to a dozen APs for coverage and capacity reasons – factories and plants take about twice that. WiFi APs are springing up everywhere. Soon, I predict wireless coverage indoors will be as ubiquitous as “air conditioning” (or heating for those in our northern latitudes).

Why would WiFi be so popular as to be in every indoor place?  …  People will want to be connected to the Internet, that’s why. They will want to be connected via a multitude of devices (laptops, tablets, PDAs, smart dual-mode phones, and messaging devices), for a multitude of reasons, every reason they connect to the Internet now, as stated above. Broadband data will provide the connectivity to the Internet that will allow people to gain access to their most useful applications, services, and content. 

Wi-Fi stands for Wireless Fidelity, and it is an industry forum (http://www.wi-fi.org/ ) that creates the set of rules that enable everyone’s equipment and networks to work together smoothly. We call that interoperability.  The technical standards that WiFi is based on come from the IEEE as technical standard 802.11.  The IEEE developed 802.11 as a standard for wireless local area computer networks (WLANs).  Succinctly then, WiFi is the forum that certifies interoperability of vendor‘s WLAN equipment to the IEEE’s 802.11 standard. WiFi is typically an indoor broadband wireless technology.

 OK, I now see the benefit of broadband wireless for indoor systems and indoor devices, but what about outdoors, when I am far away from my home or office, and far away from a hotspot, can I have broadband wireless then? Yes, soon you will have broadband wireless when you are on the move. There are several techniques of providing broadband wireless outdoors, even with WiFi (for example a technique called mesh – discussed later). But the big promise for widespread outdoor deployment is a new standard and a new interoperability forum known as WiMAX. Some believe WiMAX is then next big IEEE networking standard after Wi-Fi and Ethernet before that.

WiMax (like WiFi) is the industry forum certifying interoperability of WiMax vendor devices (http://www.wimaxforum.org/ ), for city-wide, outdoor broadband wireless networks. Outdoor networks cover city wide regions are known as metropolitan area networks (MAN). So similar t0 the IEEE’s 802.11, WiFi, WLANs, standard, WiMAX is a wireless MAN certifying interoperability of the IEEE 802.16 standard. I purposely have given you this string of wireless gobbledygook because many of these terms are loosely interchangeable in casual conversation (802.16, WMAN, WiMAX and WLAN, 802.11, and WiFi). Unfortunately, depending on the context any one of these terms will be used to describe broadband wireless devices or networks. The primary difference is that WiFi is primarily indoor short range and WiMax is primarily outdoor wide range (and of course there are exceptions to that statement too.). So I term the whole area “broadband wireless” and assume bandwidth to the user of at least 1 megabit both ways (“full duplex”).

 

OK. I have heard of WiFi, but not of WiMax. Is it coming, or is it still a long way off?  …  Well that’s a good question. WiFi is here in big numbers. WiMax is coming. The standard’s first version, 802.16a was completed last summer of 2004, and that provides the basic fixed outdoor standard. The WiMax forum has established certification laboratories in the US and Europe, so certification capability is coming,  a huge number of vendors have signed up in the WiMax forum (http://www.wimaxforum.org/about/roster/ ) and we are expecting to see certified WiMax equipment in late 2005, early 2006. Lastly, network operators are showing interest in putting up network infrastructure and services given the emergence of certified devices. So the answer is, yes broadband wireless will soon be performing in a network near you!

 One caveat that needs to be mentioned is there may be other ways of getting broadband wireless service, and that is via your cellular provider. Cellular companies have a technology advancement called “third generation” cellular or “personal communications services.” Recall in the early days of cellular the scratchy audio, the dropped calls? That was first generation analogue cellular. Then came second generation digital cellular with quieter calls and generally better service. Now 3G PCS services are the third generation of cellular’s voice band technology. It is sometimes called broadband wireless, and sometimes called near-broadband wireless. I call it “broadband-lite.” The reason it is not quite broadband is that for simplicity we have defined broadband to be one megabit circuit speed (this of course is a matter of where you draw the line). So 3G PCS speeds of one-half a megabit on average is not quite there yet. So the good news is that PCS companies have in place networks and can use those networks to deploy broadband-lite. WiMax network operators will need to deploy new networks for true broadband. So it remains to be seen what comes sooner, incremental improvement or revolutionary improvements in network speed.

 Also there is the school of thought that these networks will merge. With devices now capable of multi-mode operation, it’s conceivable that multi-mode devices will connect to your free networks at home and office, then when on the road, connect to a PCS carrier for connectivity. Not quite broadband, but good enough. This is called a converged network: Wi-Fi/WiMAX/3G-PCS.

  So that’s a quick overview of broadband wireless. You now know what it is and when it’s coming. In the second and third parts of this series, I will describe how the technology works and the current status of the technology, business and regulation of this new wireless service. 

 

 

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