My Experience in IEEE802.16j Session #43 & #44..

• Session #43 802.16 Relay TG held in May 2006, Tel Aviv, Isreal.

The objectives of this session was to organize the TG, to have contribution presentations, to deliver Draft TG Docs. preparing for the draft Std. Proposals, along with the items shown on the 1st Call for Contributions and referring to the contribution documents, and to outline the 2nd Call for Comment and Contributions.

Contributions submitted before this session were focused on several aspects, such as Terminology, Task Group Process, Usage Scenario, Technical Requirements and Evaluation Methodology. These contributions were presented on the first day. Our group submitted a contribution about frame structure which belongs to Usage Scenario. Other companies, such as Alcatel and Notel also submitted a lot of technical contributions. While at that time, the technical contributions were too early for standardization. Some companies agreed with the design, but most of companies felt there were still problems with it. However, these detailed design normally showed the trend of the development of the technologies. On the other hand, the technical contributions were not dicussed a lot during the meeting, because the preparation of this standard was still not ready and a lot of things were not so clear as well.

On the second day, there were four ad-hoc meetings for different topics. The first one was Evaluation Methodology led by Wen Tong (from Nortel, Canada); the second one was Project Plan and Schedule led by Jae Weon Cho (from Samsung, Korea); the third one was Terminology led by Roger Peterson (from Motorola); and the fourth one was Usage Scenario and Technical Requirements led by Jerry Sydir (from Intel). It is quite obvious, Intel, Samsung and Notel were very enthusiastic with this standard and put a lot of effort on it.

The Task Group also discussed on delivering Draft TG Docs. preparing for the draft Std. Proposals, along with the items shown on the 1st Call for Contributions and referring to the contribution documents, and outlining the 2nd Call for Comment and Contributions.

• Session #44 held in July 2006, San Diego, USA.

The objectives of this session is to complete the reference document set of Usage Mode, Terminology, Evaluation Mechodology and Technical Requirements, to initiate and complete the guideline document including Table of Contents, and to draft "Call for Technical Proposal".

Before the session, Peiying Zhu (from Nortel, Canada), who had much experience in standardazition, was selected as the vice chair of the task group, which partly bacause the current chair was not quite experienced. On the other hand, we can see Notel paid a lot of attention in this standard.

This time more technical contributions appeared, but some big companies still kept silence in the central techniques and tried to make the procedure following the steps. Our group submitted a contribution on Technical Requirement about the need to distinguish high and low capability Relay Stations. Based on the ability of a Relay Station, different functions could be provided. While this comment was rejected, because most of the attendants preferred an uniform design.

Usage Model and Technical Requirements ad-hoc meetings were led by Jerry Sydir (from Intel); Terminology meeting was led by Rogger Peterson (from Motorola); and Evaluation Methodology was led by Wen Tong (from Notel); During the ad-hoc meeting, two of the most powerful companies, Intel and Samsung got agreement with a lot of things, such as technical requirements, table of contents, etc.

This time more companies and institutions joined in the session and after each meeting, there happened to be more discussions about technical details. Some groups with different intensions appeared to form..