VoIP & IPTV Applications in WiMAX..

A fixed wireless solution not only offers competitive internet access, it can do the same for telephone service thus further bypassing the telephone company's copper wire network. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) offers a wider range of voice services at reduced cost to subscribers and service providers alike. The diagram below illustrates a typical solution where a WiMAX service provider can obtain wholesale VoIP services (no need for the WiMAX service provider to install and operate a VoIP softswitch).

In residential markets, VoIP is a "must offer" service. Without the additional revenue per user , WiMAX does not offer a compelling reason to switch from other forms of residential broadband. When bundled with broadband internet access and IPTV, a WiMAX triple play becomes very attractive to residential subscribers. Given the QoS, security and reliability mechanisms built into WiMAX, sub-scribers will find WiMAX VoIP as good or better than voice services from the telephone company.

Another powerful application in WiMAX, is Internet Protocol Television (IPTV). IPTV enables a WiMAX service provider to offer the same programming as cable or satellite TV service providers. IPTV, depending on compression algorithms, requires at least 1 Mbps of bandwidth between the WMAX base station and the subscriber.

In addition to IPTV programming, the service provider can also offer a variety of video on demand (VoD) services. The subscriber can select programming a la carte for their television, both home and mobile, viewing needs. This may be more desirable to the sub-scriber as they pay only for what they want to watch as opposed to having to pay for doz-ens of channels they don't want to watch. IPTV over WiMAX also enables the service provider to offer local programming as well as revenue generating local advertising.

Television as Key Application for WiMAX..

Nowadays, various kinds of applications which need high data rate, have enter the field of WiMAX systems. This will definitely enrich the life of WiMAX users. MobiTV, Inc., the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, announced the Company has joined the WiMAX Forum and will be leading its Proof-of- Concept trial with the mobile WiMAX network that will span a number of Northern California cities. A representative of MobiTV has been assigned to co-chair the mobile WiMAX Application POC initiative within the forum's Applications Working Group.

"MobiTV is strongly committed to a significant and ongoing investment in research and technology development to support the very latest wireless network technologies, and our service integration with WiMAX is a true industry-first," said Dr. Phillip Alvelda, CEO, chairman and co-founder of MobiTV. "This technology is powerful two-way and interactive wireless technology that will transform the television industry."

"We are delighted to have MobiTV join the WiMAX Forum ecosystem as a key member helping drive the development of new multimedia applications that satisfy the demands for personal broadband services by consumers around the globe," said Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum. "MobiTV is a pioneer in delivering mobile television and other multimedia content, and we look forward to their contributions as the industry works to create content-rich and high-bandwidth mobile services that will be possible with mobile WiMAX Forum Certified(TM) products."

The Northern California based Proof of Concept network will provide an environment to evaluate a variety of mobile WiMAX applications, including mobile television broadcast, video-on-demand, navigation and general network access. A second Proof of Concept network will be deployed in Taipei, Taiwan under the direction of the National Taiwan University.

"We have been working in partnership with several leaders in the wireless and technology industries to support this new network solution at MobiTV," said Ray DeRenzo, vice president of business development for MobiTV. "By participating in the WiMAX Forum and helping lead the task group for mobile television, we are confident that MobiTV will contribute to the success of this standard, and more importantly the rapid deployment of this powerful technology."

WiMAX and mobile WiMAX are the latest extensions to MobiTV's portfolio of supported network technologies, with features designed to support all of the key components that make mobile television viable to consumers and carriers alike. Those key features and benefits of the MobiTV service for WiMAX and mobile WiMAX include:

• Smooth integration with, and natural extension to existing service infrastructure
• Efficient full-duplex bi-directional delivery with full transactional capabilities
• Superior data delivery performance for full-motion video (due to its advanced IP based architecture)
• Support for a combination of Unicast and Multicast delivery models for optimal network utilization
• Full interactivity; which includes m-commerce, voting and other capabilities consumers, carriers and the advertising community wants
• Targeted national, regional, and local advertising
• There are no channel line-up limitations with WiMAX
• Increased channel change speed
• Broad client device support including: mobile phones, PDAs, laptops, set top boxes and more (radios in mass market devices)
• Broad industry support and open-standards based
• Support for the rapid deployment of new applications and services (extensions to the MobiTV service) at a low incremental cost

All these properties make the Television a very promising application in WiMAX system.

Mobile WiMAX Technology and Application in Industry..

This time I will describe something about WiMAX application in industry and provide some analysis on WiMAX application progress. This part will also give some advantages and challenges for mobile WiMAX and analyze its uncertainty in China. There are mainly 3 aspects: the 3G license is till not distributed; it is harder to find the spectrum for mobile WiMAX than fixed WiMAX; the technology selection may effect the whole development of Telecommunication field in China.

• WiMAX standard series:

IEEE802.16 is also called IEEE Wireless MAN air interface standard, which works between 2~66GHz wireless spectrum. Because the provided wireless system coverage can reach as large as 50km, so 802.16 is mainly used in Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). Based on whether mobility is supported or not, 802.16 standard can be devided into fixed and mobile broadband wireless access airlink.

After the publish of 802.16e standard, the Mobile Multi-hop Relay task group of 802.16j became one of the groups with most participation in IEEE 802.16. Through mobile multi-hop relay technique, it can increase the transmission rate, extent coverage range, and achieve obtaining uniform data rate property for users in the coverage. This property is quite likely to fulfill the requirements of future 4G mobile communication technology. While IEEE 802.16 MMR SG is the only organization which puts this technique into standard. This attracts a lot of industry companies to join in and participate and it also became a new direction in 802.16 standard.

The signal of wireless network base station has shadow fading effect because of the coverage area. This makes the effective coverage shrink a lot. In order to make sure the the user signal is still continuous when there is serious shadow fading, signal relay is used to solve the problem.

The advantages of mobile multi-hop relay:

• Low cost: relay station doesn't need the support of wired-line backhaul which reduces the cost of building backhaul network greatly. And the complexity and cost of relay station is much lower than base station. So although the effect provided may not be as good as adding a cell, it is still very attractive to operator for its low cost and flexibility.

• Selective power amplification: Different from the traditional analog power amplifier to amplify all the received signal, relay station will make digital process for received signal and amplify the power depending on situation. Furthermore, because when the relay station receives the signals, the interfering signals have already been dealt with. So when relaying signals, all the power on the signals needed to be relayed. While the signals don't need to be relayed, interfering signals will not be relayed as well.

• Multi-hop increasing coverage area: many neighboring relay staions can relay signals to farther away areas.

Relay task group has decided that this standard should be realized under the condition without modifying mobile station. Then the mobile station may not be able to recoganize the existance of relay staion. This is also one of the difficulties.

Mobile WiMAX production speeds up:

WiMAX forum plays an important role in WiMAX market. The approval of this forum and other work decide the possible future development and application of WiMAX. Nowadays the main work has totally moved to wireless WiMAX and speeds up to put technology in market. The time of approval and whether it is successful has relation with when the WiMAX devices will be on the market.

The approval of fixed WiMAX devices has started from the beginning of 2006. While because the approval of mobile WiMAX was postponed, it can only start at the end of 2006.

After all, big Telecommunication vendors all around the world tend to develop 802.16e devices. Especially in China, ZTE and Huawei have already given up the plan to make fixed WiMAX devices. There are also some other big companies such as Alcatel, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Siemens and Nortel, working hard on this system.

WiMAX Business Strategies..

As commercial applications of the IEEE’s 802.16 series of standards start to be deployed, fixed line, 3G network operators and WiMAX service provider specialists are seeking to understand which combinations of business models and deployment strategies will be viable.
Fixed line operators need to understand whether WiMAX can give them access to wireless broadband business and residential customers and the limitations and niches where mobile WiMAX can deliver broadband data services and perhaps voice and video services which are competitive with HSPA.
Operators of 3G networks who are launching HSPA need to understand the potential threat posed by WiMAX and whether to deploy WiMAX as an alternative to HSPA in regions where the demographics for building 3G networks were not favourable.
As the IEEE standard 802.16 does not define QoS, developers of WiMAX equipment and networks face severe hurdles in optimising a WiMAX network for delivery of non-data, time critical voice and video services and especially in security and equipment interoperability. Hence, there is an imperative to develop and demonstrate a class of service and security that is competitive with HSPA services.
Regulators have attempted to create a licensing environment that encourages competition between suppliers of WiMAX services whilst defining regions whose demographics are viable for commercial applications, thereby weakening the potential revenue for WiMAX license holders.
Further, the range of frequencies, licensed, unlicensed and lightly licensed, available to WiMAX service providers, creates significant barriers for handset manufacturers to produce devices that can utilise the diverse spectra used by different providers and that are competitive in terms of reliability, power requirements and cost-price with 3G/HSPA handsets. This represents another severe challenge to delivering mobile WiMAX services, especially for voice and video, which are competitive with 3G.
WiMAX faces current challenges from 3G/HSPA and UMTS-TDD and future threats from 3GPP’s LTE for MIMO-OFDM based UMTS wireless broadband which is already optimised for voice and video. Can WiMAX service providers sufficiently develop their markets and solve the QoS challenges to delivering voice and video in the face of these existing and evolving threats? It is still under discussion.