Category: Certification

June 17, 2008

2.5 GHz Gets Official: Certified WiMax Products Appear

By Glenn Fleishman

In an important move for costs eventually moving lower for Clearwire/Sprint, the WiMax Forum has certified its first 2.5 GHz products: The firms include all that putative joint venture’s partners: Intel, Motorola, Samsung, and Zyxel, as well as Airspan, Alvarion, Beceem, and Sequans, some of which may also supply gear. Nortel recently shifted its WiMax strategy to lean on Alvarion’s research and development after not getting contracts to be a main supplier to Sprint or Clearwire. The 3.5 GHz certification could start late this year; those frequencies will be in wide use outside the US. Certification is a tricky thing in the WiMax world because it was designed in waves, and it isn’t explained anywhere on the WiMax Forum site that I can find, nor outside of a vendor comment that this is Wave 2, is it mentioned in this press release. Each wave includes a set of concepts and device types. Monica Paolini, a wireless analyst and consultant who has worked for the WiMax Forum, spelled this out nearly three years ago for Wi-Fi Planet.

Posted by Glennf at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

May 1, 2007

Clearwire Receives PC Card Approval

By Glenn Fleishman

Clearwire can resell the Expedience PC Card from Motorola: The card will offer 1.5 Mbps downstream and 128 Kbps upstream according to sources. Pricing hasn’t yet been set, but it’s likely that Clearwire will establish home areas and charge a monthly roaming fee to access out-of-metro-area services. The card is not WiMax, and you’ll note the press release talks about “WiMax class” products and networks. It uses the NextNet Expedience technology, a proprietary standard that runs Clearwire’s current network, and which was part of what Clearwire spun off to Motorola with the NextNet sale.

Posted by Glennf at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

March 24, 2006

3.5 GHz Certifications from WiMax Forum

By Glenn Fleishman

The WiMax Forum has certified products that use Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) in the 3.5 GHz band: You’ll have to get used to very fine distinctions with WiMax, because there are ultimately many frequencies and many encoding methods that could be certified, although a handful will be most common. The 3.5 GHz band is not yet cleared for use in the U.S., but is in wide availability in Europe where it’s considered one of the main early bands for broadband wireless. FDD uses distinct frequencies for uplink and downlink traffic; TDD (Time DD) uses time slots but shares frequencies.

These certifications and those announced in January are for a set of interoperable parameters for base stations and subscriber units that ensure those units both meet the 802.16-2004 spec as set up for testing by the forum, and that they interoperate in expected ways. Quality of service isn’t part of these parameters at the moment, so companies aren’t required to show compliance there.

Yesterday’s announcement brings official first-wave certification to Airspan (MacroMax base station, EasyST subscriber station), Axxcelera (ExcelMax base station), Sequans (SQN1010-RD subscriber station), Siemens (WayMAX@vantage base station, subscriber station), Wavesat (MiniMax subscriber station).

Posted by Glennf at 10:51 AM | Comments (0)