WCA Show Signals a Week of Firsts for WiMAX

This was a week of firsts for WiMAX, a non-line-of-sight broadband wireless technology based on standards out of the IEEE.

While Wavesat Inc. went commercial with the first WiMAX chips, turnkey equipment company Redline Communications unveiled an 802.16-2004 compliant broadband wireless solution. Both were announced this week at the Wireless Communications Association Symposium in San Jose, Calif.

WiMAX Chip

Wavesat is the first company to make WiMAX chips generally available.

The company, which calls its WiMAX solution the DM256, already has delivered the chips to a long list of system and original device manufacturers. That list includes AirRunner Technologies in the United States; the Centre for Development of Telematics in India; Guangzhou Coast Communications Co. Ltd. of China; Hangcom Technology of China; INTRACOM S.A. of Greece; Midikon Communications Ltd. of Russia; Murandi Communications Ltd. of Canada; nex-G Systems Pte Ltd of Singapore; Trango Broadband Wireless of the U.S.; Tsinghua University in Beijing, China; VCom Inc. of Canada; WaveIP Ltd. of Israel; and WaveRider Communications Inc. of Canada.

Frank Draper, vice president of sales and marketing with Wavesat, tells xchange his company specializes in the PHY, or physical interface, aspect of WiMAX. The PHY component provides the air interface for 802.16-2004, the IEEE standard embraced by the WiMAX Forum for fixed WiMAX. Wavesat also has a MAC solution for use in customer premises equipment, he says, but doesn’t offer a MAC on the base station side because its customers, the turnkey equipment vendors, want to do that part themselves. MAC manages the transfer of information over the air interface.

Draper says Wavesat’s WiMAX chips are available in the U.S. for $35 in quantities of 10,000. That means the first round of turnkey CPE – including PHY, MAC and RF components – will be available for $250 to $300, he says. Draper says the second generation of equipment should sell for $150, with CPE dropping down to $100 in about two years.

While the Wavesat chip announced this week is based on 802.16-2004, which is expected to be the basis for the fixed version of WiMAX, the silicon company also is working on components based on 802-16e, an IEEE standard-in-the-making on which the mobile version of WiMAX will be based. Draper says Wavesat’s 802.16e chip will be backward compatible with the WiMAX chip Wavesat went GA with this week. “We try to remain flexible,” he says.

Intel Inside

Wavesat’s announcement this week means it beat Intel Corp. to the punch in going commercial with a WiMAX chip. While there are a handful of silicon companies targeting the WiMAX market, Intel has been a leader in pushing the technology forward.

Intel began sending its 802.16-2004-based chip, dubbed “Rosedale,” to several Intel “partners” in sample quantities beginning last September, but the product won’t be generally available until later in the first half of this year, says Joe English, Intel’s WiMAX campaign manager communications strategist. He adds that while the Wavesat chips address both CPE and base station applications, Intel is focused on CPE applications with its WiMAX technology.

That means Intel doesn’t need to support such base station requirements as an Ethernet chip, a TDM interface and base station security features on its chips, which English says will make the Intel solution lower cost than that of Wavesat. English declined to provide pricing for Intel’s WiMAX products.

Ronald Resnick, director of marketing for the broadband wireless division at Intel and president and chairman of the WiMAX Forum, adds that Intel’s WiMAX chips also will offer both PHY and MAC functionality in one package.

Intel plans to offer a mobile WiMAX solution, based on the IEEE 802.16e standard, at a later date. English says that will be available in PC forms by the end of 2006 and integrated into laptops in 2007.

Redline

As for Redline, the company this week unveiled an 802.16-2004-compliant broadband wireless solution, which it demonstrated at the WCA event.

“We are the very first with an 802.16-2004 compliant product,” says Keith Doucet, vice president of marketing.

Right now, there’s no such thing as a WiMAX-compliant product, because turnkey equipment must first be tested and certified by the WiMAX Forum to receive formal WiMAX status, and the WiMAX Forum won’t even open its first certification lab until the second quarter of 2005.

However, plenty of vendors are labeling their solutions “pre-WiMAX.” But Doucet says the Redline announcement is different. “Everybody is pre-WiMAX compliant,” he says, joking “you can bring in a toaster, and it’s pre-WiMAX compliant.”

The Redline compliance is meaningful, he says, because it means the company’s AN-100U, which functions as a base station and a subscriber station, actually is 802.16-2004-complaint, as opposed to just “WiMAX-like,” Doucet explains.

Among other things, products that comply with the IEEE 802.16-2004 standard must include 256 fft – meaning 256 carriers – for a high level of robustness, offer QoS, deliver low latency, and include adaptive modulation to avoid interference and multipath propagation anomalies, Doucet says.

The AN-100U now is considered an alpha product, says Doucet. Redline will make the product available in volume after receiving WiMAX certification.

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