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WiMAX wireless broadband in urban areas (TV prog)

  • 07-06-2005 8:52pm
    #1
    medO
    Closed Accounts Posts: 55 ✭✭


    A programme on CNBC Europe tonight http://www.e-life.tv/en/elife_episode10.shtml featured a WiMAX network that provides wireless broadband coverage across 90% of Brighton England. In addition to providing “souped up” wi-fi style coverage across the city, they are also using WiMAX to deliver an un-contented 24 Mbits/sec internet connection to an education establishment 7,5 km away from the town.

    The system uses OFDM technology which allows signals to travel around corners (ie non line of sight).

    The presenter stated that WiMAX is poor at penetrating large buildings, which is a small problem, given that they can use external antennae. 3G is also poor at penetrating buildings – which is a big problem for a mobile phone technology and the sucker mobile phone networks that spent €100 bn on 3G spectrum!

    The WiMAX network is operated by http://www.metranet.co.uk/

    medO


Comments

  • #2
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,815 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    medO wrote:
    The system uses OFDM technology which allows signals to travel around corners (ie non line of sight).
    No, it doesn't. It allows the receiver to cope better with multipath (reflections), at the expense of a slight tradeoff in throughput. It's not the same thing.

    Even the Intel document you linked before referred to WiMAX as Near-Line-of-Sight technology.


  • #3
    crawler
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,660 ✭✭✭crawler


    oscarBravo wrote:
    No, it doesn't. It allows the receiver to cope better with multipath (reflections), at the expense of a slight tradeoff in throughput. It's not the same thing.

    Even the Intel document you linked before referred to WiMAX as Near-Line-of-Sight technology.

    Correct, distance and capacity are seriously reduced in full NLOS deployments at standard WiMax frequencies ( leaves on tress = fine / 20 foot thick concrete walls = NOT fine) - Also just to add to that there is no "Real" WiMax stuff out there yet - it's all "WiMax ready" or "WiMax Capable" or "Pre WiMax" - Dont let anyone tell you any different....


  • #4
    medO
    Closed Accounts Posts: 55 ✭✭medO


    Stop being pedantic! You will frighten people off WiMAX before it is born.

    The posting was about a TV item on WiMAX for a consumer audience, made to a forum entitled “Broadband” (rather than a technical discussion forum on WiMAX radio). In layman’s terms the material findings were correctly conveyed, without deviating into technical issues that may make the item less readable for some people.

    Personally I have a difficulty with the term “Near Line of sight”. “I can nearly see the elephant at the bottom of the road”. “She is a little bit pregnant”. Being pedantic, the issue has little to do with “sight”, which operates at a completely different part of the spectrum.

    medO


  • #5
    oscarBravo
    Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 28,815 Mod ✭✭✭✭oscarBravo


    medO wrote:
    Stop being pedantic! You will frighten people off WiMAX before it is born.
    I'm not being pedantic, I'm being factually accurate. If WiMAX is all it's cracked up to be, then it doesn't need hyperbole to market it and it doesn't need to worry about me pointing out some of the myths that surround it.
    medO wrote:
    The posting was about a TV item on WiMAX for a consumer audience, made to a forum entitled “Broadband” (rather than a technical discussion forum on WiMAX radio). In layman’s terms the material findings were correctly conveyed, without deviating into technical issues that may make the item less readable for some people.
    It's possible to dumb things down without making them factually inaccurate. If the TV program said that an encoding scheme (which is what OFDM is) can make microwaves go around corners, then it's just plain wrong. This kind of rubbish leads people to believe that you can put WiMAX antennae on opposite sides of a mountain, and let them figure out by themselves how to communicate.

    Newsflash: it won't work.
    medO wrote:
    Personally I have a difficulty with the term “Near Line of sight”. “I can nearly see the elephant at the bottom of the road”. “She is a little bit pregnant”. Being pedantic, the issue has little to do with “sight”, which operates at a completely different part of the spectrum.
    True. It is, however, a useful analogy, in that it gives people a reasonably accurate description of how well to expect a connection to perform.

    "Non line of sight" implies that you don't need a free-space path between the antennae at all. That's potentially the case in a dense urban environment where there's plenty of multipath to work with. In rural environments, you need line of sight at microwave frequencies.


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