An 802.16 wireless service provides a communications path between a subscriber site and a core network such as the public telephone network and the Internet. This wireless broadband access standard provides the missing link for the "last mile" connection in metropolitan area networks where DSL, Cable and other broadband access methods are not available or too expensive. The Wireless MAN technology is also branded as WiMAX.

IEEE 802.16: Broadband Wireless MAN Standard (WiMAX)

IEEE 802.16 standards are concerned with the air interface between a subscriber's transceiver station and a base transceiver station. IEEE 802.16 is approved by th IEEE in June 2004. Three working groups have been chartered to produce standards: Task Group 1 of IEEE 802.16 developed a point-to-multipoint broadband wireless access standard for systems in the frequency range 10-66 GHz. The standard covers both the Media Access Control (MAC) and the physical (PHY) layers. Task groups a and b are jointly producing an amendment to extend the specification to cover both the licensed and unlicensed bands in the 2-11 GHz range.

IEEE 802.16 and WiMAX are designed as a complimentary technology to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The following table provides a quick comparison of 802.16a with to 802.11b:

Parameters

802.16a (WiMAX)

802.11 (WLAN)

802.15 (Bluetooth)

Frequency Band:

2-11GHz

2.4GHz

Varies

Range

~31 miles

~100 meters

~10meters

Data transfer rate:

70 Mbps

11 Mbps – 55 Mbps

20Kbps – 55 Mbps

Number of users:

Thousands

Dozens

Dozens

IEEE 802.16 Protocol Architecture has 4 layers: Convergence, MAC, Trnamission and physical, which can be map to two OSI lowest layers: phusical and data link.