Establishing the First European Research WiMAX Testbeds

51 In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the IEEE 802.16 family of wireless local and metropolitan area network (LAN/MAN) standards and its potential to change the field of telecommunications operations and business models. Along with the WiMAX Forum extensions that define an end-to-end architecture, this wireless LAN/MAN technology emerges as a potent proposal for building next-generation wireless networks. According to some projections, 1.3 billion people could have access to WiMAX networks by 2012. Despite the buzz however, there is very little data on what can actually be done with WiMAX, in practice, today. In fact, the current WiMAX-related literature is based primarily on analysis and simulation, making use of the general properties of systems employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), and for the most part drawing on specifics from vendor-provided data.