This course is brought to you by the authors of the best-selling book Fundamentals of WiMAX (Prentice Hall, 2007), the definitive resource on WiMAX with over 10,000 copies sold and the first comprehensive guide to WiMAX - its technical foundations, features, and performance. The course will provide students with a broad understanding of WiMAX and will provide wireless engineers, network architects and system designers with the essential information for succeeding with WiMAX-from planning through deployment. The course also offers insights to other network technologies such as LTE, HSPA & EVDO.


Who Should Attend:

This course is designed for wireless engineers, network architects and system designers who will be working on WiMAX products and services. Students will especially appreciate their detailed discussion of the performance of WiMAX based on comprehensive link and system-level simulations.

Course Overview:

The first day of the course provides a treatment of the technical building blocks of wireless broadband networks. It starts by teaching the technical foundations of broadband wireless systems such as channel modeling and cellular design. The first day also provides a substantial introduction to OFDM and OFDMA, Multi-antenna techniques like Space Time Coding and MIMO, multiple access techniques and scheduling. A comparison between WiMAX, LTE, EVDO and HSPA networks is also presented. These concepts provide a solid foundation that is needed in order to understand the PHY and MAC Layers of WiMAX.

On the second day of the course we provide an overview the PHY and MAC Layers of WiMAX. We also provide a description of the network architecture of WiMAX and explain how essential service level functions such as QoS management, authentication, security, and mobility management are provided in WiMAX.
 

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Day 1: Technical Foundations of WiMAX & Wireless Broadband Technologies:

1. An Introduction to WiMAX and Wireless Broadband
- The case for wireless broadband
- Evolution of WiMAX
- Business challenges
- WiMAX's key technical features

2. Broadband Wireless 101
- Wireless communication basics
- Path loss and shadowing
- Narrowband fading, and countermeasures
- Wideband fading, and countermeasures
- Cellular systems
- Sectoring

3. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Multiple Access (OFDMA)
- The multicarrier concept
- The OFDM Engine: IFFT/FFT and cyclic prefix
- Frequency-domain channel estimation and equalization
- Challenges in implementing OFDM: carrier offset, intercarrier interference, peak-to-average ratio
- The OFDMA concept
- Subcarrier and power assignment in OFDMA

4. Multiple Antenna Techniques
- Receive diversity
- Transmit diversity
- Beam-steering
- Beam-forming
- Spatial multiplexing and MIMO
- Multiuser MIMO
- Practical issues in MIMO systems including channel estimation and feedback, intercell interference, antenna correlation and packaging

5. WiMAX Performance & Comparison to other Broadband Standards
- WiMAX link performance
- WiMAX system performance
- WiMAX vs. HSPA and EVDO
- WiMAX vs. LTE


Day 2: Overview of the WiMAX standard

1. Physical Layer of WiMAX
- OFDMA Symbol Structure
- Subcarrier Permutation Schemes
- Frame Structure
- Channel Coding and HARQ

2. Measurement Reporting
- Channel Estimation
- Actual and Effective CINR Measurement
- Ranging and Power Control

3. Multi Antenna Techniques in WiMAX
- Open Transmit Diversity and MIMO
- Collaborative MIMO in Uplink
- Closed Loop MIMO and AAS

4. MAC Layer of WiMAX
- Convergence Sublayer
- MAC-PDU Handling
- Scheduling Services and Bandwidth Request
- QoS Architecture (connection ID, service flows and flow ID)
- Network Entry and Initialization

5. Mobility Management in WiMAX
- Idle Mode and Sleep Mode (power saving)
- Scanning and Handover Mechanisms
- Macro Diversity HO and Fast BS Selection

6. WiMAX Network Architecture
- Network Reference Model
- Network Discovery and Selection
- IP Address Assignment

7. Authentication and Security in WiMAX
- AAA Architecture
- Authentication Procedures
- ASN Security Architecture

8. QoS of Service Architecture in WiMAX
- QoS mechanisms in packet network
- Service Flows
- Policy Functions

9. Mobility Management and Radio Resource Management
- ASN Anchored Mobility
- Mobile IP and CSN Anchored Mobility (IPv4 and IPv6)
- RRM (radio resource management)
- Paging and Idle Model Operation Revisited


About the Authors/Instructor

Dr. Jeffrey G. Andrews is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, and Associate Director of the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG). He developed Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems at Qualcomm from 1995 to 1997, and has consulted for the WiMAX Forum, Microsoft, Palm, Ricoh, ADC, and NASA. Dr. Andrews is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and serves as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Dr. Andrews holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Dr. Andrews, along with Dr. Robert Heath and Dr. Sanjay Shakkottai, was recently awarded a grant from DARPA worth $6.5 million to develop a new non-equilibrium information theory that can describe the fundamental limits of mobile wireless ad hoc networks.

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