Tuesday, October 10, 2006
1:30 to 5:00pm

WiMAX and the Road to 4G

Craig Mathias, Principal, Farpoint Group,
WiMAX World Technology Track Chair

WiMAX has made important progress as it has evolved from a fixed point-to-multipoint technology to one supporting subscriber mobility. Interesting, this makes WiMAX one of the first 4G technologies, which we define as wireless, mobile, broadband, and with full support for time-bounded services like voice and video. Mobile WiMAX thus has the potential to become a key player in the drive towards ubiquitous mobile broadband connectivity.

But mobile WiMAX isn’t the only 4G game in town. Wi-Fi-based wireless LANs (WLANs) are also evolving in this direction, albeit with small cells and unlicensed bandwidth, and cellular technologies including High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and Evolution-Data Optimized (EV-DO) Rev B provide a challenge on the wireless wide-area (WWAN) network end. There’s also a possibility that new developments, like IEEE 802.20, might also produce future players in the 4G space.

This seminar will cover all of the above systems, with detailed technical information and comparisons of these alternatives. We’ll also cover the fundamental constraints in wireless communications and how advanced technologies, like MIMO, will enable high performance with high mobility. We’ll present how the various business and competitive alternatives will play against one another, and how technology convergence might be the optimal path to solutions with the capacity, flexibility, and convenience required to meet long-term customer and application requirements.