Summary and Prospect for IEEE802.16j..

Currently more and more companies and institutions are more and more interested in the standardization of IEEE802.16j MMP, especially in Asian countries, such as China, Korea, Singapore and Japan. And many of the companies have developed WiMAX products and put them into market. Facing with the fast development of WiMAX system, nearly all the telecommunication companies are willing to participate in the future big market. Therefore participating in the standardization procedure firstly is a very important step.

While in the group of voting members, companies, such as Intel, Samsung, Motorola, etc., are playing important roles, which also proves that many big companies are paying more and more attention to the intellectural properties. This is always considered to be a right strategy in the intense competition among companies.

On the other hand, this standard was supposed to be summited this July and approved this September. While the schedule may be delayed for several months, partly because the organizer also recognized the big market in China. And most of the Chinese companies just joined in this part. This is because the 3G license is just about to be assigned by the government and most of the vendors have just signed the contracts with operators for 3G equipments. The next step for them are to develop the next generation network. So in this way, the Task Group also wants to wait for China to catch up.

The procedure of Working Group letter ballot has started. The next meeting is planned to be held in July 2007, in San Francisco, USA.. And more technical contributions and comments are supposed to appear. We hope the IEEE802.16j standard can be a very powerful complement of WiMAX for its difficulty in the legacy Base Station coverage.

Continuing Development of IEEE802.16j Standard..

• Session #48 held in March 2007, Orlando, USA

The aim of this session is to advance the development of the P802.16j Baseline Document by going through the Comments and Contributions presentation, discussion and resolution, and considering the five Guideline Documents of usage models, definitions and terminology, evaluation methodology, technical requirements and table of contents.

This time 118 comments and 146 contributions were submitted and 85 of them were accepted. Members formed into 8 groups for ad-hoc discussion, which are Frame Structure, Security, Mobility Management Sleep/Idle Mode, HARQ, Routing and Path Management, MAC PDU Construction, Measurement & Reporting and other MAC/Other PHY. Because of so many topics, the meeting schedule was quite tight.

Then members texted Proposals for the Baseline Document and scheduled towards the initial draft and WG letter ballot. And after the meeting, Technical Editors revised the baseline document, which was a further step into standardization of IEEE802.16j.

• Session #49 in May 2007, Portland, USA

The main purpose of this meeting is to advance the development of the P802.16j Baseline Document. Firstly the ad-hoc group chairs reported the results of their group discussion based on the topics mentioned above. Then members discussed about resolution of comments returned to TG from adhoc groups, and Resolution of comments deferred straight to #49. After that they reviewed the comment classification and presented technical comments. Later they dealt with editorial comments.

Later Development of IEEE802.16j Standard..

• #45 Session held in September 2006, Tremblant, Canada

Since the topics of Usage Model and Terminology were done in Session #44, the objectives of #45 meeting was focused on Evaluation Methodology, Technical Requirements and Table of Contents, and also preparing for the technical proposals towards the next meeting.

For the documents of Technical Requirements and Table of Contents, before the meeting, many companies discussed a lot about them. So these documents were submitted by a group of companies. While Samsung had their own documents. During the ad-hoc discussion time, all the companies got agreement and resulted in one document.

Most of the comments were about Evaluation Methodology. Institutions from Taiwan, companies such as Notel and Nokia made a lot of effort on it.

• Session #46 held in November 2006, Dallas, USA

Except the technical contributions, the main purpose was to consider the five Guideline Documents of Usage Models, Definitions and Terminology, Evaluation Methodology, Technical Requirements and Table of Contents in order to prepare for the draft standard towards the next meeting.

This time 156 contributions were submitted before the meeting, which proved the participation was expanded a lot. And the presentations were organized based on technical topic to topic approach. The discussion at the end of topic was also organized. In this way, the technical details were forming step by step.

• Session #47 held in January 2007, London, England

This session went through the Technical Contributions presentation and discussion, considered the five Guideline Documents of Usage Models Definitions and Terminology, Evaluation Methodology, Technical Requirements and Table of Contents, and proceeded to the “call for comments” on the baseline document towards the next meeting for the draft standard.

170 contributions were submitted on topics of Relay concepts, Security, Frame structure, Network entry, BW request, Construction & transmission of MAC PDUs, Measurement & reporting, Mobility management, Routing & path management, RRM, Scheduling & Interference control, PHY, and Evaluation methodology. Among these Frame structure and Network entry got most attention, and each of them obtained 33 contributions.

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..

Initiation of IEEE802.16j Standard..

From this time on, I will use several posts to talk about some of my experience in joining in the IEEE802.16j sessions. During my short working experience, I joined in two IEEE802.16j sessions, i.e. the 43th and the 44th held in Tel Aviv, Isreal, and San Diego, USA, separately.

On 802.16 Working Group closing plenary meeting of July 21st, 2005, the new study group supporters, including Mitsuo Nohara (currently the chair), Peiying Zhu (vice chair, from Nortel in Canada), Mike Hart (from Fujitsu in England), etc. exchanged the views on Mobile Multi-hop Relay Networking and had open comments and technical discussions. They supported the creation of new study group and planned future activity and schedule. The session started from #39 meeting and is chaired by Mitsuo Nohara (from a Japanese operator).

IEEE 802.16's Mobile Multihop Relay Study Group was chartered on 22 July 2005. The Study Group expired on 30 March 2006, with the approval of its Project Authorization Request (PAR) P802.16j. The development of the P802.16j project has been assigned to IEEE 802.16's Relay Task Group. The PAR addresses "Air Interface for Fixed and Mobile Broadband Wireless Access Systems - Multihop Relay Specification."

In the #39 session held in Taipei, the task group summarized the scope of proposed relay project and its main features. Participants provided contributions on ideas for usage and application scenario, i.e. Network topology and capability of RS; Principle requirements on PHY/MACprotocols in IEEE802.16 to provide multi-hop connection; ideas for spectral scenario and securityissues, and references of the technology such as IEEE802.1 bridging. They discussed and agreed on the need for clarification/revision of the concept table, the need for Common Terminology, and the call for Contributions to be issued including PAR and 5 Criteria (Scope, Purpose, Reason, etc.), and the scope of MMR task including evaluation criteria, backward compatibility.

In session #40, the contributions provided technical issues relevant to a “PAR and Five Criteria” and direction of MMR activities for high level issues such as service scenarios, network topologies, etc.

In the #41 session held in India, the contributions included comments on the “Discussion Base on Draft PAR and Five Criteria”, technical issues relevant to a Tutorial Presentation and distinctions from other IEEE 802 standards and projects such as 802.1 on Spanning Tree and Bridge, 802.11s and 802.16h. At this meeting, the PAR and 5 Criteria were completed and the participants reacted to 802.1 comments.

In session #42 in Denver, Tutorial Session, Comment resolution on 802.16j PAR & 5 Criteria, and reactions to 802.1 comments were dealt with. Until here, 802 EC endorses PAR approval. And from the next session, the Relay Task Group would start the formal meeting.