First Mobile WiMAX products receive WiMAX Forum Certified mark

by Jeff Orr, Editor
Mobile Broadband News

The first eight products — four base stations and four mobile stations — receiving the WiMAX Forum Certified mark based on the IEEE802.16e-2005 standard have been announced by WiMAX Forum.

These products must meet or surpass the certification program requirements using WiMAX Certification Program Release 1.0 Wave 1 requirements. Wave 1 systems are not tested for advanced antenna capabilities such as beamforming or MIMO, which is addressed in all other Mobile WiMAX certification profiles dubbed “Wave 2″ also starting the certification testing process today.

The only certification profile for Wave 1 testing the WiBro profile, synonymous with the WiBro service in South Korea. WiBro operates at 2.3 GHz and uses 8.75 MHz wide channels along with TDD duplexing.

The eight products that received certification are:

Base Stations (BS)
POSDATA
Runcom - RNU2000N Stand-alone Base Station Unit
Samsung Electronics
Sequans Communications - Reference Design using SQN2130 ASIC

Mobile Stations (MS)
POSDATA - USB modem
RUNCOM - RNU200CPE User Terminal
Samsung Electronics - PCMCIA Card
Sequans Communications - Mobile Station reference design using SQN1110

Products that receive the WiMAX Forum Certified mark conform to the radio and air protocol requirements specified by WiMAX Forum in a specific frequency band and channel size. Other profiles exist for popular frequency bands including 2.5 and 3.5 GHz. Devices that achieve the mark are able to mix-and-match for connections to a common base station that has also received certification. No less than three vendors’ products must be available for a certification profile to begin testing.

The first WiMAX Forum Certified products were announced in January 2006. Those conformed to the 802.16-2004 standard, which is predominantly used for fixed wireless applications. The 802.16e-2005 standard was ratified in December 2005 and permits devices to roam from one base station to another. Products based on the two different standards are not compatible with each other.

More about the WiMAX Forum Certified program and the initial certified products is available in today’s Mobile Broadband News Podcast.