Enabling wireless broadband technologies and services for the next billion users

IEEE 802.16/WiMAX-based broadband and mobile wireless access is expected to be a significant component in the next generation (e.g., beyond 3G, 4G) wireless systems. IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard, which incorporates several advanced radio transmission technologies such as orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), adaptive modulation and coding, and adaptive forward error correction (FEC), is designed to provide broadband wireless capability using a well-defined quality-of-service (QoS) framework. Therefore, this is a promising technology for wireless services requiring high- rate transmission (in the range of tens of Mbps) and strict QoS requirements in both indoor and outdoor environments. This technology is currently of big interest to researchers and practitioners involved in the design, analysis, installation, and management of mobile broadband wireless access systems and networks. The objective of this tutorial is to provide a complete overview on the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard and the current state-of-the-art research on the design, analysis, and optimization of IEEE802.16/WiMAX-based networks. The key technical challenges related to protocol engineering in these networks are described. The aim is to provide a survey on the emerging IEEE 802.16/WiMAX technology rather than an in-depth study on a specific protocol engineering problem. An overview of the different evolutions of the IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard broadband wireless access (BWA) is presented and the open research issues in protocol engineering (e.g., for radio resource management, mobility support, security) are identified. A comprehensive survey on radio resource management, traffic scheduling, admission control, mobility management, and security mechanisms for IEEE 802.16/WiMAX are provided. A comparative performance study among the third-generation (3G) and the IEEE 802.16-based systems is provided. Several applications (e.g., wireless telemedicine and e-health services), services and deployment scenarios are described and the necessary protocol design and engineering issues are outlined.

The explosive growth of the Internet over the last decade has led to an increasing demand for high-speed, ubiquitous Internet access. Broadband wireless technologies are increasingly gaining popularity by the successful global deployment of the wireless personal area networks (Bluetooth-IEEE 802.15.1), wireless local area networks (WiFi- IEEE 802.lln), and wireless metropolitan area networks (WiMAX- IEEE 802.16). New ICT and e-Learning strategies and advances in wireless standards and technologies- particularly in the areas of Bluetooth, WiFi (wireless fidelity), WiMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) and mobile computing can help to bridge the digital divide in education and research. Using open broadband Wireless technologies and implementing mobile computing architectures, one can overcome the challenges of ground, infrastructure, and finance to increase access; deploy broadband quickly and cost-effectively to areas currently not served; and extend the benefits of digital revolution to previously unreachable populations. These technologies aim to provide low-cost, high-performance Wireless access to residential and business applications. As technology evolves to address portable and mobile applications, the required features and performance of the system will increase. Evolution toward the phase called "full mobility" provides incremental support for low latency, low packet loss and real-time handoff of subscriber terminals operating at high speeds. This paper presents the analogy of promising wireless technologies on different frequencies: Bluetooth, WiFi, and WiMAX. This paper is organised into four parts: part I describes the functionality and usage of Bluetooth in the wireless personal area networks, part II presents the WiFi- IEEE 802.1 In strategies for users considering higher-bandwidth alternatives to existing wireless personal area networks, part III discusses how the WiMAX is used as a current standard for Wireless data transmission technology, which is optimized to deliver high, bursty data rates to mobile subscribers, and to support real-time multimedia and Voice over IP (VoIP) applications, and part-TV explores how these emerging Wireless technologies differ from one another.

Wireless network operators often offer wireless broadband services by using different wireless technologies such as WiMAX, WiFi and HSPA. Each wireless technology often uses a separate and stand alone network architecture, and thus operations and management may easily become a complex and expensive task. In this paper we present the design and implementation of an all-IP heterogeneous network where the services provided are public and private wireless broadband access based on Fixed WiMAX, WiFi and HSPA. These basic services and combinations of these are further used to design different commercial products in the network. Radio coverage measurements are then performed for these technologies in interesting parts of the realized deployed network. The overall network implementation has been in successful operation for several months.

There is a continuous demand for increasing wireless access broadband services to the end users, especially with widespread high quality mobile devices. The Internet mobile applications and multimedia services are constantly hungry for broadband wireless bandwidth. In order to overcome this bandwidth limitation, a frequency band (57-64 GHz) has recently been assigned for short range indoor wireless broadband signals due to the large available bandwidth. However, the transmission at this band is limited to a few meters due to the high atmospheric absorption loss. Radio over Fiber (RoF) technology was considered an efficient solution to extend the distribution range and wireless capacity services. This chapter presents an introduction to RoF technology and its basic required optical components for indoor short range wireless millimeter waves (mm-waves). The limiting factors of RoF and its impairments are also described. Moreover, optical mm-wave generation solutions are explained and followed by the recent optical 60GHz activities and upcoming research areas such as THz and optical wireless.

In this article, a meander line-shaped pentaband (2.18–2.24, 2.38–2.46, 2.65–2.70, 3.10–3.32, 3.38–3.46 GHz) four-element multiple-input–multiple-output antenna is presented. The proposed antenna is also circularly polarized in two bands (at 2.2 and 2.4 GHz) with dual-polarization like right-handed at port 1 or 3 and left-handed at port 2 or 4, which is widely used for mobile satellite services (MSS) and Internet of Things applications. This antenna is designed and fabricated with compact size 50 × 70 × 1.6 mm3 on the FR-4 substrate with good diversity performance in pentaband. Simulated results of antenna-like return loss, isolation, and parameters-related diversity have also been tested experimentally in a controlled environment, which is within the permissible limit. The designed antenna will be appropriate for MSS, industrial scientific and medical (ISM), broadband radio services and educational broadband services, WiMAX radio location services, and amateur radio services. Meanwhile, specific absorption rate of the designed antenna has been examined in an empirical environment for the Fresnel radiating near-field applications.

High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) is the name of a new technology to provide wireless narrowband and broadband services. A unique property of HAPs is the ability of preparing emergency telecommunication facilities once the catastrophic events occur. In these situations efficient use of limited spectrum resources would be of great importance. This paper presented a fuzzy channel allocation scheme in HAPs for emergency mobile communications. The suggested scheme is based on guard channel policy. It dynamically adjusts optimum number of reserved channels according to important quality of service (QoS) parameters to make an efficient use of resources, while prioritizes on-going calls over new calls. Simulation compares the proposed fuzzy scheme with fixed guard channel scheme and complete sharing scheme. Results show that, the fuzzy scheme is able to achieve a better grade of service (GoS), while can keep handoff failures low as network traffic load changes.

Hybrid wireless network technologies are well suited to providing broadband access everywhere with enhanced performance in term of coverage, capacity and throughput compared to access networks based on a single technology. Wireless broadband technologies have implicit advantages such as an ability to serve the customer everywhere and mitigate the digital divide, offer right capacity at right cost and remain connected on the move. Wireless is scalable in both capacity and coverage areas, an imperative as requested services evolve towards increasingly bandwidth hungry applications. There is a rapid development that takes place today, with a considerable interest in establishing WiMAX solutions copying the success of WiFi. This may well happen, but many challenges are still to be overcome. Interoperability of hybrid networks is a key design objective to drive solution costs down. Efficient utilisation of the frequency spectrum requires progress in various fields such as interference suppression and smart radios, efficient resource management and access control. The designing and planning of hybrid networks require suitable software tools taking into account user and service characteristics as well as evolving technical and economical factors. This paper is based on work in the project BROADWAN (BROADWAN, 2004; Tjelta et al., 2004), partly funded under the Information Society Technologies (IST) priority of the European Commission Sixth Framework Programme.

This paper provides results from a survey of broadband customers in Australia in November 2017. Respondents included both NBN customers and non-NBN broadband customers. The survey showed an increasing acceptance of mobile broadband, in line with other market trends, but identified significant dissatisfaction – one quarter of mobile broadband respondents and about one third of fixed broadband respondents – with current services. Factors that may affect a decision to switch from fixed to mobile broadband, or vice versa, included price, reliability, bundling of phone with broadband, and the capability of streaming video on demand. Negative perceptions of the NBN are also significant. Overall, we identify that about 30% of existing fixed broadband households would consider switching to a wireless broadband service. We also note the future rollout of 5G wireless service and the resultant market positioning of telcos, which may support further positive perceptions of wireless broadband.

Although WiMAX, based on the IEEE 802.16 family of standards, has emerged as one of the major candidates for next generation networks, it is also clear that in the near future, the combination of several technologies will be required. In this sense, the support of mobility in heterogeneous environments, addressing broadband wireless, is one of the main requirements in next generation networks. This chapter presents an architecture based on the recently standardized IEEE 802.21 framework, integrating both mobility and Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms, and accommodating different wired and wireless technologies, such as WiMAX, Wi-Fi, DVB, and UMTS. This architecture supports seamless mobility in broadband wireless access (BWA) networks, and thus, it is suitable for next generation network environments. The results, obtained through real experimentation of the implemented architecture through an advanced mobility scenario using a real WiMAX testbed, show that the architecture is able to provide QoS under dynamic scenarios, with fast integrated QoS and mobility signaling.

With the deployment of novel wireless broadband technologies such as LTE and LTE-Advanced, new types of devices will be able to communicate remotely such as sensors and actuators, enabling the deployment of new services and applications generically named Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication. However, the current core network architectures are designed only for Human-to-Human communication, lacking the fundamental support for the machine type communication patterns for functions like mobility and resource management, charging control etc. This article introduces a novel solution for mitigating with the basic support for resource management for M2M through wireless device based customization and grouping and introduction of cached based resource reservation and event notification mechanisms. Furthermore, the concept is exemplified on the 3GPP Evolved Packet Core architecture and evaluated as a testbed realization based on the Fraunhofer OpenEPC testbed.

Telemedicine is the delivery of health care services over a distance by health care providers using electronic technologies for the diagnosis, information exchange, treatment and disease prevention, injuries prevention, research and evaluation, and for continuing education for the health care provider. Telemedicine has been in existence since the 1960s, through telephone and video technologies. Over several decades, wireless broadband technology has become better with advancement with internet speed becoming almost ubiquitous. According to a telemedicine study by World Health Organization, 114 countries, that is, (59%) of member states, revealed that teleradiology has the highest rate of established service provision globally at (33%). Close to 70% of the countries indicated the need to know the cost and cost-effectiveness of telemedicine solutions, and above 50% needed to know about the infrastructure needed for telemedicine implementation while 60% needed clarification on clinical uses. With the evolution of Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communication services into 5G, it is the objective of this study to demonstrate how a combination of faster communication at lower latencies can be used to provide clinical support that overcomes geographical barriers using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), with a goal of transforming healthcare service provision. A resultant prototype telemedicine application capable of medical diagnosis using artificial intelligence techniques demonstrates with the highest accuracy at 93.68% match. The medical similarity index of pathogens is captured from digital sources such as USB microscopes and scanners as medical images or specimens.

In this new information age, high data rate and strong reliability features our wireless communication systems and is becoming the dominant factor for a successful deployment of commercial networks. MIMO-OFDM (multiple input multiple output-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing), a new wireless broadband technology, has gained great popularity for its capability of high rate transmission and its robustness against multi-path fading and other channel impairments. A major challenge to MIMO-OFDM systems is how to obtain the channel state information accurately and promptly for coherent detection of information symbols and channel synchronization. In the first part, this dissertation formulates the channel estimation problem for MIMO-OFDM systems and proposes a pilot-tone based estimation algorithm. A complex equivalent base-band MIMO-OFDM signal model is presented by matrix representation. By choosing equally-spaced and equally-powered pilot tones from sub-carriers in one OFDM symbol, a down-sampled version of the original signal model is obtained. Furthermore, this signal model is transformed into a linear form solvable for the LS (least-square) estimation algorithm. Based on the resultant model, a simple pilot-tone design is proposed in the form of a unitary matrix, whose rows stand for different pilot-tone sets in the frequency domain and whose columns represent distinct transmit antennas in the spatial domain. From the analysis and synthesis of the pilot-tone design in this dissertation, our estimation algorithm can reduce the computational complexity inherited in MIMO systems by the fact that the pilot-tone matrix is essentially a unitary matrix, and is proven an optimal channel estimator in the sense of achieving the minimum MSE (mean squared error) of channel estimation for a fixed power of pilot tones. In the second part, this dissertation addresses the wireless location problem in WiMax (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) networks, which is mainly based on the MIMO-OFDM technology. From the measurement data of TDOA (time difference of arrival), AOA (angle of arrival) or a combination of those two, a quasi-linear form is formulated for an LS-type solution. It is assumed that the observation data is corrupted by a zero-mean AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) with a very small variance. Under this assumption, the noise term in the quasi-liner form is proved to hold a normal distribution approximately. Hence the ML (maximum-likelihood) estimation and the LS-type solution are equivalent. But the ML estimation technique is not feasible here due to its computational complexity and the possible nonexistence of the optimal solution. Our proposed method is capable

Application of the term video streaming in contemporary usage denotes compression techniques and data buffering, which can transmit video in real time over the network. There is currently a rapid growth and development of technologies using wireless broadband technology as a transport, which is a serious alternative to cellular communication systems. Adverse effect of the aggressive environment used in wireless networks transmission results in data packets undergoing serious distortions and often getting lost in transit. All existing research in this area investigate the known types of errors separately. At present there are no standard approaches to determining the effect of errors on transmission quality of services. Besides, the spate in popularity of multimedia applications has led to the need for optimization of bandwidth allocation and usage in telecommunication networks. Modern telecommunication networks should by their definition be able to maintain the quality of different applications with different Quality of Service (QoS) levels. QoS requirements are generally dependent on the parameters of network and application layers of the OSI model. At the application layer QoS depends on factors such as resolution, bit rate, frame rate, video type, audio codecs, and so on. At the network layer, distortions (such as delay, jitter, packet loss, etc.) are introduced.

Technical characteristics of an innovative prototype e-learning platform using satellite communications for control theory courses are exposed. A detailed account of all necessary tools and mechanisms is presented enabling real time text, and audio/video based communication between tutors and learners. The provided end-user driven services include: a virtual classroom, offline operation, sharing of applications, private/public chatting, audio/video streaming. In addition a concise description of the pilot network architecture depending on the DVB-RCS standard is presented justifying further the choice of the communications platform. Simulation results concerning the teaching of fundamental issues in Networked Control Theory within the proposed architecture are provided. Connections with hybrid configurations such as wireless terrestrial broadband technologies (DVB-RCS/ WiMAX, DVB-RCS/Wi-Fi) are further analyzed and justified. Finally some conclusive anticipated directions related to the future of modern control courses education in connection with state of art technological advances are explored. AMS (classification): 97U50, 97U70, 97U80, 97D99

The frequency region 28-38 GHz has potential applications in fixed-wireless broadband services on account of availability of large spectrum and adequate device support to ease spectrum congestion problems, particularly in urban centers. This paper envisages development of a multiray propagation model to investigate multipath fading prevailing in millimeter wave radio propagation in a micro cellular environment. The model is simulated and measurements are carried out to estimate fast fading, propagation loss, and delay spread along micro cellular streets of variable width. The results depicted in the paper yields quantitative trends, with specific use in planning radio cells for fixed- wireless broadband services in urban microcellular environment.