CES 2008: Intel Showcases WiMAX from Moving Vehicle in Las Vegas

Demonstration of streaming music, VoIP and video shows the possibilities of a true, mobile, multi mega-bit broadband technology.

During CES in Las Vegas, I had the unique opportunity to get an up-close look of a real mobile WiMAX network. This was no "pre-WiMAX equipment" trial, but a full working demonstration of a 802.16e network, similar to the ones that will be rolled out by Sprint and Clearwire in the US in the near future.

The demonstration, courtesy of Intel and in conjunction with the CES trade show, consisted of 4 base stations covering several square miles around the Las Vegas convention center. The folks from Intel explained that the WiMAX network was a smaller version of the 100 base station network currently being tested in the Portland Oregon area.

The Las Vegas network was operating on 2.6Ghz licensed spectrum utilizing 10Mhz channels on 3 sector base stations. The equipment consisted of Motorola Wi4 Diversity access points mounted within the vehicles, which were also connected to a Wi-Fi router to hi-light Wi-Fi enabled devices such as a laptop and Apple iPhone.

As I climbed into the vehicle the radio was playing a Norah Jones song which I learned was being streamed from a file-server in Portland Oregon. My Intel hosts asked if I had any other music requests and within seconds, we were listening to one of the latest tunes from Bruce Springsteen. The audio quality was smooth and clear with no noticeable latency.

We headed out of the parking lot from the Las Vegas convention center and snapped a few pictures. These photos were immediately uploaded and saved to the file-server in Portland and then downloaded back and viewed from the iPhone, all within a matter of seconds.

Next on the list was to open up a browser and check out some popular websites. We pulled up Google Earth and zoomed into the Las Vegas Strip. All of the 3D imagery rendered flawlessly. We then opened up Skype and placed a call to my friend who was walking the trade floor. The call was smooth and clear with no latency. During the call we experienced a hand-off between the base stations with no interruptions.

For the final test, we accessed a file from the Portland server and watched a short video on the Intel test network in Oregon, while simultaneously running multiple applications with no degradation in performance. During the test we also experienced speeds up to 45 miles per hour while experiencing multiple hand-offs between the base stations.

While the downlink performance was impressive at 3Mbs, even more impressive was the performance of the uplink, or the ability to send data back to the base station, at a full 1.5Mbs which will enable applications such as full two-way video conferencing.

The QOS (quality of service) features of WiMAX also improve the efficiency and management of the network by controlling how packets are delivered based on application and distance from the base station. For example, the system can recognize a user streaming video and can prioritize those packets separately to ensure low latency and better experience.

WiMax.com Staff

Monday, January 14, 2008 in Applications | Business  | Permalink |  Comments (4)