IEEE 802.

16: WiMAX
(Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access)

Amit Kr Mandal
 Mobility vs. Data Rate

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 Broadband Wireless Access

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 IEEE 802.16: Key Features
■ Broadband Wireless Access
■ Up to 50 km. Up to 70 Mbps.
■ Data rate vs Distance trade off using adaptive modulation.
■ 64QAM to BPSK
■ Offers non-line of site (NLOS) operation
■ 1.5 to 28 MHz channels
■ Hundreds of simultaneous sessions per channel
■ Delivers >1 Mbps per user
■ Both Licensed and license-exempt spectrum
■ QoS for voice, video, and T1/E1, continuous and bursty traffic
■ Support Point-to-multipoint and Mesh network models

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 WiMAX
■ A vendor organization for ensuring interoperability
■ WiMAX certified product will work with other WiMAX
certified products
■ WiMAX forum lists certified base stations and subscriber
stations from Aperto Networks, Redline Communications, and
SEQUANS Communications.
■ Developments:
◻ Outdoor subscriber stations similar to satellite dish
◻ Indoor subscriber stations
◻ Portable modems for laptops

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 Duplexing Options
■ Duplex = Bi-Directional Communication
■ Full-Duplex = Both directions at the same time This is known
as Frequency division duplexing (FDD)

■ Half-duplex = One direction at a time

■ This is known as Time division duplex (TDD)

■ Half-Duplex FDD (HFDD): Two frequencies. But either

transmitter or receiver is on.

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 802.16 Frame Structure

TDD = Time Division Duplexing FDD = Freq Div Duplexing

DL = Downlink ( Base to subscriber) UL = Uplink
FCH = Frame control header: Burst Profile, Down-link map,
Uplink map, DL channel descriptor, etc.

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 802.16 AAS Zone Structure

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 IEEE 802.16 Protocol Structure

■ MAC layer consists of three sub-layers.

■ The first sub-layer is the Service Specific Convergence Sub-layer
(CS), which maps higher level data services to MAC layer service
flow and connections
■ The second sub-layer is Common Part Sub-layer (CPS), which is
the core of the standard and is tightly integrated with the security
sub-layer
■ The last sub-layer is Security Sub-layer addressing the
authentication, key establishment and exchange, encryption and
decryption of data exchanged between MAC and PHY layers

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 IEEE 802.16 Protocol Structure
■ Physical Layer Features of WiMAX:
◻ There are two popular services of the physical layer −
■ Fixed WiMAX.
■ Mobile WiMAX.
◻ WiMAX initially provided data rates of 30 – 40 Mbps. The
updated version that came in 2011 provides up to 1 Gbps data
rates for fixed stations.
◻ It operates in the frequency band of 2 GHz to 11 GHz. The
bandwidth is dynamically allocated as per user requirements.
◻ WiMAX uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
with 256-channels. Mobile WiMAX uses scalable OFDM.
◻ It uses convolutional codes, particularly Reed – Solomon Codes
for forward error correction (FEC) to deal with damaged frames.

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 IEEE 802.16 Protocol Structure
■ MAC Layer
■ The Mac link layer is subdivided into three sublayers −
■ Security sublayer − This is the bottommost layer and is concerned with
security and privacy of the wireless network.
◻ It deals with encryption, decryption and key management.
■ MAC common sublayer − The MAC sublayer is concerned with channel
management.
◻ The channel management is connection oriented, a feature that plays
due to which quality of service (QoS) guarantees are given to the
subscriber.
◻ The base station controls the system. It schedules downlink and uplink
channels.
■ Service specific convergence sublayer − This is equivalent to logical link
control layer of other systems.
◻ It provides the required services and interface to network layer

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 Subscriber Initialization

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 IEEE 802.16 Activities
■ P802.16/Conformance04: <11 GHz
■ P802.16g: Management Plane Procedures and
Services
■ P802.16j: Mobile MIB
■ 802.16h: License-exempt channel coordination
■ Mobile Multihop Relay (MMR) study group

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 WiMAX security solutions

■ Security Association: A security association (SA) is a set of

security information parameters that a Base Station (BS) and
one or more of its client Subscriber Stations (SS) share.
■ Each SA has its own identifier (SAID) and also contains a
cryptographic suite identifier (for selected algorithms), traffic
encryption keys (TEKs) and initialization vectors.

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 WiMAX security solutions
■ Public key infrastructure: WiMAX uses the Privacy and
Key Management Protocol (PKM) for secure key
management, transfer and exchange between mobile stations.
■ This protocol also authenticates an SS to a BS.
■ The PKM protocol uses X.509 digital certificates, RSA
public-key algorithm and a strong encryption algorithm AES.
■ Initial version of WiMAX (PKMv1) uses one-way
authentication and has a risk for Man-in-the-middle (MITM)
attack.
■ To deal with this issue, in the later version (802.16e), the
PKMv2 was used to provide two-way authentication
mechanism.

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 WiMAX Security Solutions

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 WiMAX security solutions
■ Device/User Authentication: Generally, WiMAX supports
three types of authentication which are handled in the
security sub-layer.
■ The first type is RSA-based authentication which applies
X.509 certificates together with RSA encryption.
◻ The X.509 certificate is issued by the SS manufacturer and
contains the SS’s public key (PK) and its MAC address.
◻ When requesting an Authorization Key (AK), the SS sends its
digital certificate to the BS, the BS validates the certificate, and
then uses the verified PK to encrypt an AK and pass it to the
SS.

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 WiMAX security solutions
■ The second type is EAP (Extensive Authentication Protocol)
based authentication in which the SS is authenticated by an
X.509 certificate or by a unique operator-issued credential
such as a SIM, or even by user-name/password.
◻ The network operator can choose one of three types of EAP:
EAP-AKA (Authentication and Key Agreement), EAP-TLS
(Transport Layer Security) and EAP-TTLS MS-CHAP v2
(Tunneled Transport Layer Security with Microsoft Challenge-
Handshake Authentication Protocol version 2).

■ The third type of authentication that the security sub-layer

supports is the RSA-based authentication followed by EAP
authentication.

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 WiMAX security solutions

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 EEE 802.11 vs IEEE 802.16
Feature IEEE 802.16 IEEE 802.11
Technology Defines WIMAX. Defines WLANs or WiFi.

Application Last-mile of broadband wireless Limited area forming wireless

Area access. LANs.

Versions of 802.16a, 802.16d, 802.16e, 802.11a, 11b, 11g, 11n, 11ac,

the Standard 802.16m etc. 11ad etc.

Domain of It is used for a wide area mostly It is used for a limited area
Usage outdoors. mostly indoors.

Area of WiMAX generally covers the area WiFi has a smaller coverage
Coverage between 7 Km to 50 Km so that it area of 30 to 100 meters,
can provide a large number of that enables devices within
customers connected to the this range to connect to the
broadband services. network services.

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 EEE 802.11 vs IEEE 802.16
Feature IEEE 802.16 IEEE 802.11
Date Rate The data rate is typically 5 bps/Hz The data rate is 2.7 bps/Hz
with a maximum of 100 Mbps in a with a maximum of 54 Mbps
20 MHz channel. in 20 MHz channel.
Frequency It operates in the frequency of 2 It operates in the frequency
Band GHz to 11 GHz. of 2.4 GHz.
Encryption It uses mandatory DES (Data It uses RC4 (Rivest Cipher
Encryption Standard) with 4). 802.11i uses AES.
optional AES (Advanced
Encryption Standard)
QoS (Quality A number of QoS options are It does not provide any
of Service) available like UGS, rtPS, nrtPS, QoS. However, 802.11e lays
BE, etc. WiMAX can bring the down QoS.
Internet the connection needed to
service local WiFi networks.
Ubiquitous Provides ubiquitous networking Cannot provide ubiquitous
Services services. services.

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