Electro/Telecom Industry Trends
IEEE WirelessHUMAN™ Project
 |
| Issue Table of Contents |
|
|
The Standards Board of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) Standards Association has approved the WirelessHUMAN (Wireless High-Speed Unlicensed Metropolitan Area Networks) project, a new initiative within the IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access. IEEE 802.16 created Task Group 4 to draft the air interface standard, which will address the explosive growth market of providing data services in license-exempt spectrum. The primary focus is on 5-6 GHz.
"Unlicensed spectrum is a huge worldwide market opportunity for fixed broadband wireless access because it may be deployed by any operator without the delay and cost of acquiring a license," said 802.16 Chair Roger Marks. "Standardization is key to making this technology readily available to the public as an alternative Internet connection. Because of the special considerations of unlicensed spectrum, we needed to establish a project separate from our existing work on metropolitan area network standards in the licensed bands. Our previous success will provide an excellent baseline. We welcome new participants to our open process."
The IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access is creating the IEEE 802.16 family of WirelessMAN Standards for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks. With 134 members and over 40 official observers, IEEE 802.16 operates in an open process to develop accredited air interface standards and recommended practices for global use.
To facilitate early standardization of the license-exempt MAN industry, the WirelessHUMAN standard will be based on modifications of the IEEE 802.16 medium access control layer, while the physical layer will be based on the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) mechanism of IEEE 802.11a and similar standards. "The WirelessHUMAN standard represents a significant opportunity for the unlicensed metropolitan area network industry. Timely availability of this standard will considerably improve the benefits of standardization for the unlicensed industry, especially for the nascent but rapidly growing 5-6 GHz industry segment," said Dr. Durga Satapathy of Sprint, Chair of the WirelessHUMAN Task Group and of the predecessor study group that developed the project plan. Acting quickly, the Task Group has already issued a public Call for Contributions.