backtop

Print 31 comment(s) - last by CascadingDarkn.. on Feb 27 at 7:59 PM
The technology will also be WiMAX and 4G compatible

According to a published draft information on 802.16 standards, the IEEE is currently working on a new wireless standard called 802.16m. The new standard is still more than a year or two away, but according to IEEE documents, the group hopes that 802.16m will be able to deliver 1Gbps transfer rates over the air. In fact, 802.16m is "required" to meet downstream speeds of up to 1Gbps in "nomadic" mode, or high efficiency/strong signal mode. The standard also has a "high mobility" mode which allows for 100Mbps rates.

What gives 802.16m the capability to reach such high speeds is its use of multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) technology. MIMO is currently used in a host of 802.11g and 802.11n routers and access points currently available on the market to speed things up. 54Mbps routers that use MIMO are capable of reaching theoretical speeds up to 108Mbit.sec.

The IEEE committee indicated that while 802.16m is not part of the WiMAX, it promises that there will be cross platform compatibility between the two standards. The new high-speed standard is also slated to be compatible with future 4G wireless networks that will make their way into mobile phones roughly two to three years from now. At that time, 4G will be based on OFDMA standards and abandon current WCDMA and CDMA2000 standards.

The IEEE indicated that 802.16m will also be OFDMA compatible:
IEEE 802.16m amends the IEEE 802.16 WirelessMAN-OFDMA specification to provide an advanced air interface for operation in licensed bands. It will meet the cellular layer requirements of IMT-Advanced next generation mobile networks. It will be designed to provide significantly improved performance compared to other high rate broadband cellular network systems.
Current WiMAX products are in "wave 2" revisions, which mean that they use a two-by-two antenna setup to achieve high signal integrity and transfer rates. The WiMAX forum is currently working on what it calls "wave 3" WiMAX, which is based on a four-by-four antenna setup. Current 802.16m specifications include:
  • Very low rate Data: = 16 kbps
  • Low rate Data & Low Multimedia: = 144 kbps
  • Medium multimedia: = 2 Mbps
  • High multimedia: = 30 Mbps
  • Super high multimedia: 30 Mbps ~ 100 Mbps / 1 Gbps
As things stand today, however, the uplink speed for 802.16m is still undetermined.

While 802.16m will bring very high transfer rates to mobile devices, the IEEE committee is looking to push the technology towards military purposes before bringing it to the mainstream market. According to a 802.16m document from the IEEE, the military will help develop the new wireless standard faster. "Today’s military requirements could become tomorrow’s civilian requirements," the IEEE stated.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Overkill speed, but range?
By FrankM on 2/23/2007 1:41:42 AM , Rating: 3
A theoretical maximum of 1 Gbps = 128 MBps.
Meanwhile most service providers are in either single- or double-digit Mbps speed ranges.
Furthermore, are there (laptop) drives with such high sustained read/write rates?
This is utter overkill, far from necessary now.

What wireless has more problems with is range and obstacle penetration. A couple of walls and the speed drops drastically. I think they should rather work on that first...




RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By otispunkmeyer on 2/23/2007 3:56:52 AM , Rating: 2
wireless is garbage in my house

all the walls are solid brick and quite thick too. i dont even have to use WEP because by the time the signal reaches either of my neighbourghs its next to useless.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By Torched on 2/23/2007 9:20:11 AM , Rating: 2
I think you all are getting this confused with wireless networking. This spec is part or a cellular data spec in the 4th Generation(4G) of cellular technology.

However, Wimax deos not have any large backers yet. The achieved speeds have caused competing tech i.e. 3G to extend their specs beyond the current data limits creating 3G+ see this article: http://www.wirelessnetdesignline.com/news/showArti...


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By sdsdv10 on 2/23/2007 10:20:58 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
However, Wimax deos not have any large backers yet.


Sprint Nextel, Intel Corporation, Motorola, Samsung and Nokia teams will showcase mobile WiMAX in a jointly operated booth at the 3GSM World Congress 2007.

From this press release http://www2.sprint.com/mr/news_dtl.do?id=15320

Looks like some pretty large backers to me. Am I missing something?


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By Torched on 2/23/2007 11:52:05 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
During a keynote session at the 3GSM World Congress, one spectator posed a question that went to the heart of the matter: Wasn't WiMax the "the elephant in the room" at the conclave?
Arun Sarin, CEO of U.K.-based Vodafone Group, responded that while WiMax "is an interesting technology," it is "not really ready for prime time the way that we build our networks today. . . . To get all puffy and excited about it now is too much, too soon." HSDPA, the GSM Association's newest high-speed upgrade, is on schedule to compete with WiMax, he said.
From the article I linked.

1) Intel is not a market leader in cell phone technolgy.
2) Handset manufacturers listen to the demands of the client i.e. Sprint in the case of your Corporate press release.
3) How long has Intel been ramming this down the industries throats?

The thing you are missing is the fact that Sprint is the only carrier you mention. Most other carriers are going w-cdma or hspa and their derivatives


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By peternelson on 2/24/2007 11:32:32 PM , Rating: 2
Intel are big supporters of Wimax technology.

"1) Intel is not a market leader in cell phone technolgy."

Should that matter?

They are in fact a market leader in wireless networking. EVERY "Centrino" laptop anywhere has to be using Intel's own wireless networking chipset. Given that fact, Intel's interest in wimax is definitely very relevant, regardless if they make cellphones or not.

However with these new standards like pre-N, N, wimax variants, 16m it is very clear to me that we should not just be stuck with the tech we bought with our computer, but should be able to easily obtain the latest wireless hardware to upgrade it. In many cases that is not easy with laptops because the antenna solution is part of the chassis design and unlikely to work with a nextgen wireless module. Seems a shame to me this high rate of technology obsolescence and is one reason I'm still on B/G without MIMO. Wired lan is far superior, and the higher speed wireless standards tend to encroach on shared spectrum of other uses by using more channel bandwidth. I'd say stick with wires unless you really need wireless. However, directional high gain fixed point to point links on wimax could be very useful.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By MobileZone on 2/23/2007 10:55:07 AM , Rating: 2
What? No large backers?
Does Intel mean anything to you?


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By UNCjigga on 2/23/2007 11:09:54 AM , Rating: 2
Seriously, isn't the Nextel portion of Sprint transitioning from iDEN to WiMax next year?


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By Charlemain on 2/23/2007 8:45:33 PM , Rating: 2
Even Intel is slowing down a bit...they just pulled WiMax support from their Santa Rosa chipset.
http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/hardware/0,39042972,...


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By msva124 on 2/23/2007 4:07:15 AM , Rating: 5
For internet? Yes it's overkill. For LAN? 20MB/s wireless would be great. That's a 700MB movie in 35 seconds. Right now the fastest product on the market, your average 108Mbps Pre-N product, will do 25Mbps. Which is 3MB/s or a 700MB movie file in 4 minutes. For Tivo owners, this leaves a lot to be desired.

Even above hard drive speeds there is still an advantage. Say 100MB/s which would outpace my hard disk. I am running out the door and decide I want to copy a Tivo'd movie onto my laptop. I can copy it to RAM in 7 seconds, put the laptop in hibernate and write it to the hard drive later.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By MobileZone on 2/23/2007 10:52:46 AM , Rating: 2
Thinking about only one laptop, it can be far from necessary.

But such type of technology is also applied to the distribution of data connection/internet to large groups of users at the same time. E.g. a block buildings, a far away condo, a small village, etc.

Furthermore, such technology is not intended to be used indoors (although you can), so, walls and barriers are more like an issue to the telecom/small operators providing these services. You don't need such speed inside your house, unless you have 20 sons playing 2nd life at the same time.

If you consider this, 1Gbps is definitely not utter overkill.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By cocoviper on 2/23/2007 1:34:36 PM , Rating: 2
I would hope your laptop could EASILY handle 128Mbps...
128Mbps = 16MB/sec

If your notebook drive can't sustain that I think you should probally upgrade man...


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By 2kfire on 2/23/2007 5:36:10 PM , Rating: 2
The conversion was from 1 Gb which equals 125 MB. I'm sure his laptop drive can easily handle 16 MB/sec, but none can yet handle 125 MB/sec. Otherwise, who would need RAIDed Raptors?!?


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By JeffDM on 2/24/2007 10:51:21 AM , Rating: 2
I don't agree that the speed is overkill. If it's going to be a cellular or "last mile" internet technology, they need to divide that signal among many users over a large area. Even splitting the area around a tower like they usually do with sector antennas (the vertical gray or white bars on cell towers), it needs to serve a lot of subscribers in those sectors.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By Nocturnal on 2/24/2007 7:32:51 PM , Rating: 2
Well what did Bill Gates say about us not needing more than something like 640Kbits of memory? Surely it's a tad bit overkill for now and no one is going ot reach the theoretical limit of this particular standard but it's better than nothing, IMHO. I prefer they strive towards breaking barriers than being content with what they have.


RE: Overkill speed, but range?
By Jedi2155 on 2/24/2007 10:36:05 PM , Rating: 2
MIMO grealtly helped with ranged, but extra speed is always nice.

The thing that needs to be realized here however is that this won't even be finalized for a few years (add in another few years if you consider how much fiasco there usually is in bringing out a new wireless standard...), so who knows how fast laptops drives will be then? Striped...SSD drives..hybrid drives..the possibilities are too many and too early to really know if its unnecessary now.


couldn't happen fast enough
By msva124 on 2/22/2007 8:47:02 PM , Rating: 2
A lot of the problem in my house is making a decent wireless bridge. Usually there's only one or two devices that need to transfer data at high speeds, and the rest would be fine with plain 54g or 11b. But one of those devices is on the opposite side of the house from the broadband connection. Creating a bridge between one side of the house and the other, without running any wires, has proven difficult. One directional antenna on each end of the bridge provides a stable (albeit weak) signal but the bandwidth leaves something to be desired. Do these MIMO 108mbps routers already use all three channels 1,6, and 11? If not, that would be something of interest. I.E. a pair of wireless bridges that transmit data via 54g x 3.




RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By Ecmaster76 on 2/22/2007 8:58:01 PM , Rating: 2
Have you considered ethernet over power?

Turns your AC wall outlets into cat5 :)


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By msva124 on 2/22/2007 9:13:51 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, I have a couple Netgear XE102's. The speed was slower than 54g wireless, but what really bothered me was the inconsistent quality of service. Sometimes it was 2Mbps, sometimes it slowed to a crawl, say 128kbps. I guess it had to do with other electrical devices that happened to be in use at the time.

I tried phoneline as well, and it worked better but the speed to the other end of the house never topped 2Mbps. My hope was that HomePNA 3.0 would be faster, but it seems to have been shelved.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By Brassbullet on 2/22/2007 9:16:57 PM , Rating: 2
Powerlind networking, would be an option for him, but its often an expensive one and I don't know if he would be getting the performace he desired.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By Brassbullet on 2/22/2007 9:19:31 PM , Rating: 2
looks I was a little slow on the reply, but my suspicions were obviously correct.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By msva124 on 2/22/2007 11:42:50 PM , Rating: 2
I've learned more, and it seems that 2.4Ghz 108Mbps Pre-802.11n products do in fact use such a strategy. They use all of channel 6, plus about half of channels 1 and 11. But they're often hampered from achieving full bandwidth because of "politeness" constraints, i.e. they automatically scale down if interference with neighboring 802.11b/g devices is detected. Unless you live in a rural area, this is pretty much a given.

Probably what I'll do is buy (or wait for) some 108Mbps bridges that run at 5.8Ghz, thus avoiding the politeness constraints. Attached routers and wireless clients, I'll set to standard 2.4Ghz 54g. That allows for maximum bandwidth and quality of service at the bridges + any devices wired to them. Other wireless devices will continue to operate at the slower, but adequate 54g.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By Scabies on 2/23/2007 12:39:21 PM , Rating: 2
You might want to try DD-WRT. Most routers crank out 20-30 milliwatts, you can pump that by two or three times as much using customized firmware. That, and Linksys Speedbooster (some call it afterburner or whatnot) is specced at 125Mbps. You can connect two routers wirelessly by running DD-WRT, leaving one a wireless router and turning one into an access point (I am doing this to get internet wireless->LANhub->ps3/xbox)
If nothing else, its fun to mess around with. Careful that the FCC doesnt catch you putting out 125mw.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By cheburashka on 2/23/2007 4:56:14 PM , Rating: 2
This is how my network is setup too.


RE: couldn't happen fast enough
By msva124 on 2/23/2007 7:15:44 PM , Rating: 2
Very cool. I probably won't use all the features, but the degree of flexibility is very impressive. Basically it's like turning the router into a little PC.

Here is a tutorial I found, specifically about DD-WRT as it relates to wireless bridges:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3...

I had already gotten some non-Linksys wireless bridges, but will probably be picking up a pair of WRT54GL's out of curiosity.


802.16m ?!
By Scrogneugneu on 2/22/2007 11:35:02 PM , Rating: 2
What happened to 802.11n? Isn't it still in draft version, and supposed to be done by 2008?




RE: 802.16m ?!
By livelouddiefast on 2/23/2007 1:32:57 AM , Rating: 1
mmm... the day when draft n, dx10, solid-state hard drives, oled displays, ddr3 and a new monitor standard (displayport? udi?)are in place will be the day i finally get a laptop. some new battery technology (fuel cell anyone?) would be fantastic too.

long story short 802.11n still is in draft version, though i believe they just released version 2.0 and there is what seems to be a decent chance that all it will need is a firmware upgrade to get to the final version.

the tech world sucks because you always know better things are jsut around the corner... n comes out... then you gotta wait for m... sigh.


RE: 802.16m ?!
By uofahoefx on 2/23/2007 9:52:08 AM , Rating: 3
802.16m does not compete with 802.11n. WIMAX will be used by carriers to provide mobile broadband. 802.11n will still exist as an access point in your home.


RE: 802.16m ?!
By MobileZone on 2/23/2007 11:00:39 AM , Rating: 2
True. Some people think that they will have a Wimax base station right over the desk. These days, the far away from transmitting antennas, the better & safer I feel.


RE: 802.16m ?!
By CascadingDarkness on 2/27/2007 7:59:51 PM , Rating: 2
I feel perfectly safe around all these wonderful things shooting rays in all directions. Then again, I don't plan on having any children. You guys that might be considering the possibility may want to watch out. =)


NIc cards?
By noreaga0221 on 2/27/2007 6:08:13 PM , Rating: 2
If I can bundle my cell phone and internet service into one bill go for it! I'll take 1Gbbps speed over FiOS as long as the QOS is up to par.




"If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel." -- AMD CEO Hector Ruiz in 2007











botimage
Copyright 2012 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki