Tutorials

TU05: The IEEE Wireless Metropolitan Area Network; WiMax
Instructors: Patrick Hosein, Mahesh Makhihani, Shiau-He (Shawn) Tsai, Rath Vannithamby and Anthony C.K. Soong, Ericsson Inc., USA

Wednesday 5 April 2006
14:00 – 17:30

There has been keen interest in the literature recently on the IEEE wireless metropolitan area network (MAN) developed within IEEE 802.16 (commonly known as the WiMax System). The latest version of this new exiting technology is currently being actively developed and the standard is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of 2005. Through the use of flexible physical layer features and medium access control (MAC) layer mechanisms, this system can be used to deliver broadband voice and data into areas that may have a wide range of population densities, cell radii, propagation environments, and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The physical layer provides flexibilities of time or frequency domain duplexing, multiple bandwidths, adjustable subchannelization, scalable OFDM formats, adaptive coded modulation, and advanced antenna system. The IEEE 802.16 MAC layer offers a connection-oriented service to upper layers of the protocol stack. The QoS of each connection takes one of 1four levels: constant bit rate grant, real time polling, non-real-time polling, and best effort. The MAC layer also offers packing, fragmentation, ARQ and H-ARQ. Fast BS switching and macro diversity combining are supported for efficient high-speed data transmissions. The MAC privacy sublayer performs authentication, key exchange and encryption of MAC packet data units. The MAC Convergence sublayers at the top of the MAC enable Ethernet, ATM, TDM voice and IP (Internet Protocol) services to be offered.

This tutorial covers a number of key features of the WiMax system as delineated in IEEE 802.16 and the WiMax Forum. It will discuss extensively the support for high speed packet data in both the down (base station to mobile) and up (mobile station to base station) links. The former includes the design of the high-speed data channel, its components (Hybrid-ARQ, link adaptation, modulation and coding, scheduling, etc.), MAC, and QoS support. The details of how WiMax exploits channel variation, channel quality feedback and link adaptation to significantly increase the spectral efficiency will be given. The latter includes the design of the high speed packet data uplink, MAC operation, polling and scheduling, ARQ, H-ARQ, link adaptation, modulation and coding, ranging and power control. Details on network entry, handover, idle mode and sleep mode processes will be discussed. Detail discussions into the enabling technologies and how the WiMax system exploits these technologies to improve the up and down link average per sector throughput will be presented. System performance simulation results and implementation issues will also be discussed.

Patrick Hosein attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he obtained five degrees including the Ph.D in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is presently a Principal Engineer at Ericsson Inc. in San Diego. Prior to this he was a Principal Technical Staff Member at AT&T Laboratories in New Jersey. Patrick's present technical interests include the modelling, analysis and simulation of radio resource management algorithms for wireless 3G networks.

Mahesh Makhijani [S'93, M'96] received the B.S.(Hons) from Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NYand M.S. degrees in electrical and electronic engineering from the National Technological University, Fort Collins, CO.

He is currently with Ericsson Inc., in San Diego, CA, where he is a Staff Engineer with the Radio Systems group responsible for systems engineering and CDMA2000 as well as WiMax air-interface standardization and simulations. His technical interest lies in multiple access techniques in wireless communications, CDMA capacity modeling, radio propagation modeling techniques, interworking of radio and IP-based protocols and RF network design.

Anthony C.K. Soong (S’88-M’91-SM’02) received the B.Sc. degree in animal physiology and physics from he University of Calgary, and the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering, the M.Sc. degree in biomedical physics and Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta. He is presently a Principal Engineer with Ericsson Inc. in Boulder, Colorado, USA and leads a group responsible for the physical layer development and standardization of cdma2000 as well as WiMax systems. Prior to joining Ericsson, he was with the system group at Qualcomm Inc.. His research interests are in statistical signal processing, robust statistics, wireless communications, spread spectrum techniques, OFDM, and physiological signal processing.

Dr. Soong is a senior member of the IEEE. He has published numerous scientific papers and has over 25 patents granted or pending. He has served on the technical program committee of major conferences in the area of communication engineering, as guest editor in the IEEE Communications Magazine and is a technical reviewer for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology and IEEE Communication Letters.

Shiauhe Shawn Tsai received his B.S. degree from Catholic Fu-Jen University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1991, and M.S.E.E. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, U.S.A., in 1995 and 2000, respectively.

From 1991 to 1994, he served as Second Lieutenant in the R.O.C. Army and worked as a full-time lab administrator in Catholic Fu-Jen University. From 1995 to 2000, he was a teaching and research assistant in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University and participated in the Small Unit Operations and the Global Mobile Computing programs of the Defense Advanced Research Agency. He also helped the establishment of the Spread Spectrum and Satellite Communications Lab. He is currently a Senior Staff Engineer at Ericsson Inc., San Diego, CA. Dr. Tsai has published more than 10 journal and conference papers. His research interests include spread spectrum and satellite communications, error control coding, digital signal processing, and wireless fading channels.

Rath Vannithamby received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 1994, 1996 and 2001 respectively. Dr. Vannithamby was a Research Assistant in the Network Architecture Lab and Wireless Communications Lab at the University of Toronto during 1994 to 1996 and 1996 to 2000 respectively. He was also a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto during 1994 to 2000. He is currently a Staff Engineer in the CDMA Radio Access Network Systems Group, Ericsson Inc., San Diego, California, U.S.A. He is a member of IEEE and IEEE/TCPC. He has published over 15 IEEE/IEE 1415 papers, and has over 20 patents pending. He has served on technical program committee for major wireless communication conferences, and as guest editor for EURASIP Journal on wireless communications and networking. His research interests are in the area of Radio Resource Management techniques and MAC and Signaling Layer Protocols for high-speed wireless access networks including CDMA2000 and IEEE 802.16.