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Mobile WiMAX Products Get Certified

Wireless Week

Now you can start dropping the “pre” when talking about certain mobile WiMAX gear.

That’s because the WiMAX Forum announced the first 10 mobile WiMAX products to get the official seal of approval for 2.5 GHz. The products include four base stations and six mobile station modules, or terminals. Companies getting certification for their products include Airspan Networks, Alvarion, Beceem Communications, Intel, Motorola, Samsung Electronics, Sequans Communications and ZyXEL.

Interestingly, while in the 3G world only the terminals are certified, WiMAX supporters wanted to certify both terminals and base stations, said Ed Agis, certification working group co-chairman for the WiMAX Forum. That basically means that you can be assured that if you’re in Brussels and using a base station from Vendor B, you can travel to Madrid and use the same terminal on a base station provided by Vendor A.

Certification is awarded after a vigorous testing process, which involves the protocol, radio and interoperability, he said. The 2.5 GHz products were certified at the WiMAX Forum’s lead certification testing lab, operated by AT4 wireless in Malaga, Spain.

The WiMAX Forum already has completed its fifth mobile WiMAX plugfest and certification of Wave 2 products, well ahead of anything the LTE camp might be doing, he said.

Sprint Nextel, which is merging properties with Clearwire to create a nationwide WiMAX network, uses 2.5 GHz, as does KDDI in Japan and operators in Taiwan and the United Kingdom. More operators around the world are using 3.5 GHz, but the WiMAX Forum is further along with the 2.5 GHz certification because that’s what initial operators were using. The forum is now finalizing plans for the 3.5 GHz band and expects to have devices certified there by the end of the year.

All the 2.5 GHz gear had to pass the test for MIMO, which uses two antennas for more efficient transmission and reception of the packets in the network.

The WiMAX Forum estimates that more than 100 Mobile WiMAX products will be certified by the end of 2008, and by 2011 more than 1,000 products will undergo Mobile WiMAX certification.

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