Mobile Wimax Base Station Platform

The dynamic nature of the RF environment due to high mobility creates complexity in the design of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)-based PHY Functional Block. ASTRI researchers and experts are developing the algorithms of key components such as synchronization and channel estimation, that are capable of providing reliable high-speed transmission in rich multi-path and time-varying environment, yet can be implemented with moderate complexity.

Below are the key feature highlights of the PHY functional block

• OFDMA with 1024 FFT
• 10 MHz channel bandwidth
• 5 ms TDD frame with configurable UL/DL split
• Adaptive modulation support of QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM
• PUSC and FUSC for downlink and PUSC for uplink
• PAPR reduction techniques
• Support of vehicle speed of 120km per hour
• SISO and MIMO support

The MAC functional block is fully compliant with the WiMAX standard. Features such as MAC PDU processing, IPv4 Packet Convergence Sub-layer, dynamic service flow management, QoS support for five traffic types (UGS, rtPS, ertPS, nrtPS and BE), ARQ, adaptive modulation, are supported. The block will also include advanced features like advanced cross-layer MAC QoS scheduling, optimized radio resources management, handover and mobility management, which are based on our advanced technologies. Other advanced features including PKMv2 security, Hybrid-ARQ (H-ARQ), uplink power control, and so forth, will also be supported.

The architecture is modular and flexible enabling users to customize our design to suit their specific needs, as well as to develop their own applications. The implementation is portable to different underlying platforms.

Below are the key feature highlights of the MAC functional block

• IPv4/IPv6/Ethernet Packet CS with PHS
• MAC PDU concatenation, fragmentation and packing
• MAC ARQ (Automatic Repeat Request)
• Dynamic service flow management
• Advanced MAC QoS scheduling and optimized radio resource management
• Request-Grant mechanism
• Handover and mobility management
• Support of HARQ, MIMO, uplink power control

ASTRI’s mobile WiMAX base station platform is integrated with high performance MPU, DSP, FPGA, Mixed-Signal, and RF to provide a complete solution with high processing power and performance and suitable for current and future advance wireless technology development. This highly flexible platform is capable to allow the dynamic and application-oriented hardware optimization in cost, form factor, and power reduction. The PHY and MAC of mobile WiMAX base station is implementing with this platform.

In addition to the features specified in IEEE 802.16-2004 and IEEE 802.16e-2005 standards, we are designing differentiating IPs (Intellectual Property) on channel estimation, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) antenna, advanced MAC QoS scheduling, MAC-PHY cross-layer optimization, fast handover and seamless mobility management, and so forth, to enable high performance with low cost for the mobile WiMAX system.