WiMAX, How do WiMAX Works?

Worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), based on the
Institution of Electrical & Electronics Engineering (IEEE) 802.16 standards,
enables wireless broadband access anywhere, anytime, and on virtually
any device. When users want broadband service today, they are generally
restricted to a T1, digital subscriber loop (DSL), or cable modem-based con-
nection. However, these wireline infrastructures can be considerably more
expensive and time-consuming to deploy than a wireless system. In addi-
tion, rural areas and developing countries lack optical fiber or copper wire
infrastructure for broadband services, and service providers are unwilling
to install the necessary equipments in these areas because of little profit and
potential. WiMAX is an ideal technology for backhaul applications because
it eliminates expansive leased line or fiber alternative. WiMAX promises to
deliver high data rates over large areas to a large number of users (Shows Fig w).
It can provide broadband access to locations in the world’s rural and developing areas
where broadband is currently unavailable.

Fig w: WiMAX network

WiMAX has numerous advantages, such as improved performance and
robustness, end-to-end internet protocol (IP)-based network, secure mobility,
and broadband speeds for voice, data, and video. It is a wireless metropolitan
area network (WMAN) technology that provides interoperable broadband
wireless connectivity to fixed, portable, and nomadic users within 50 km of
service area. It allows the users to get broadband connectivity without the
need of direct line-of-sight communication to the base station and provides
total data rates up to 75 Mbps with sufficient bandwidth to simultaneously
support hundreds of residential and business areas with a single base station.
In fact WiMAX is not a technology, but rather a configuration mark, or
“stamp of approval’’ given to equipments that meet certain conformity and
interoperability tests for the IEEE 802.16 family of standards. A similar con-
fusion surrounds the term Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), which like WiMAX, is
a certification mark for equipments based on a different set of IEEE stan-
dard from the 802.11 working group for wireless local area network (WLAN).
Neither WiMAX nor Wi-Fi is a technology but their names have been adopted
in popular usage to denote the technologies behind them. This is due to the
difficulty of using terms like IEEE 802.11 in common speech and writing.
WiMAX is a term coined to describe standard, interoperable implementation
of IEEE 802.16 wireless networks in a way similar to Wi-Fi being interopera-
ble of the 802.11 WLAN standards. However, the working of WiMAX is very
different from Wi-Fi.