The long road to WiMAX [wireless MAN standard]

Open standards and the support of major players are making WiMAX the 'hot' technology for fixed wireless access. WiMAX is a shorthand way of referring to the IEEE 802.16 standard. The type of communication it specifies is known as W-MAN (wireless metropolitan area network), and it extends the distance between the transmitting and receiving devices from less than 100 m in Wi-Fi to some 10 km in WiMAX. This article outlines the technology involved and describes a typical network architecture which consists of a base station (or a number of base stations) in the centre of a city, with the base stations communicating with customer premises equipment.