Tropper Technologies, Inc. - Wireless Workshop

Broadband Wireless Access is available now in the licensed spectrum as well. This includes point to multipoint and point to consecutive point stationary terminals. BWA to mobile subscribers is also coming shortly via the emerging 2.5 / 3G Cellular/PCS mobile services. The path is neither clear nor simple. The economic, political and technical implications are complex. It is interesting here to create a consistent framework from which we can explore the various options.

Delivery to Stationary Terminals

Service	Technology	Freq. Band (MHz.)	Notes	Cell Range
Primary Fixed Wireless	MMDS	2.1-2.7 GHz.	Originally Line of Sight (Non-Line of Sight using OFDM to carry the modulation) ~ 5 Mbits/sec data rate (data rate is heavily implementation specific)	~ 35 miles (can go smaller but will incur greater backhaul costs)
Primary Fixed Wireless	LMDS	24-42 GHz.	Line of Sight ~ 100 Mbits/sec data rate (data rate is heavily implementation specific)	~3 Km a function of Tx power, rain fade etc...
Primary Fixed Wireless	FWA	3.5 GHz.	Evolving standard
Primary Fixed Wireless	Free Space Optics		Line of Sight Employ lasers to carry the information to CPEs

These point-to-multipoint and point-to-consecutive point technologies deliver services to stationary terminals. They are generally considered to be "fiber extensions" or "last mile" solutions and thus compete with DSL, Cable Modems and Satellite technologies for access to stationary customers.

Delivery to Mobile Terminals

Service	Technology	Standard	Data Rate (Peak)	Notes
Mobile 2.5G	GPRS (General Packet Radio Service)		~144 Kbits/sec	Enhancement to 2G GSM that supports Data Packets. Overcomes the GSM SMS client limitation of messages of < 160 bytes @ 14.4 Kbits/sec.
Mobile 2.5G	EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates for Global Evolution)		384 Kbits/sec (Best Effort)	Enhancement to 2G GSM that increases the data rate.
Mobile 2.5G	136 HS
Mobile 3G	UMTS (Universal Mobile Telephone Service) ETSI's Contribution	IMT-2000 Family
	TDD Mode		2 Mbits/sec	TD-CDMA (Indoor) Unpaired Bands (easier to find spectrum)
	FDD Mode-Phase I		144Kbits/sec 384 Kbits/sec	Paired Spectrum WB-TDMA (Mobile) WB-TDMA (Pedestrian)
	FDD Mode-Phase II		2 Mbits/sec	WB-TDMA (Both M&P)
Mobile 3G	W-CDMA (Wideband CDMA) ARIB's Contribution	IMT-2000 Family		Wideband Direct Sequence CDMA
Mobile 3G	UTRA / W-CDMA	Harmonized Europe / Japan W-CDMA		Wideband Direct Sequence CDMA
Mobile 3G	Cdma2000	IMT-2000 Family		Multi-carrier CDMA
	1x-Phase I (1xRTT)		144 / 307 Kbits/sec	RTT=Radio Transmission Technology
	1x-Phase III(3xRTT)		2 Mbits/sec
	1x-EV-DO		2.4 Mbits/sec	Data Only
	1x-EV-DV		up to 5 Mbits/sec	Data and Voice

It is useful to model the various network elements and interfaces in terms of their OSI abstractions.