WiMAX Experimentation and Verification in Field in Italy

Under the auspices of the Italian Communications Ministry, in a trial program directed by the UGO Bordoni Foundation, Ericsson performed extensive field tests to verify and measure the performance of IEEE 802.16-2004 compliant equipment in the 3.5 GHz band. The trial was strictly technological in nature, with the goals of validating the claimed technical characteristics of this technology and determining the behavior of a point-to-multipoint technology in this frequency band. The experimentation was carried out with equipment from Airspan, a global partner of Ericsson. Measurements were done both at the radio bearer layer and the packet data layer. At the radio layer coverage and propagation were measured and characterized. Studies are under way using these results to develop a propagation model of the 802.16-2004 signal in the 3.5 GHz band. In addition, inter-cell interference was measured. At the packet layer, throughput, packet loss, and jitter were measured under varying field conditions, including various types of terrain and differing levels of clutter. Standard service functionality and performance were verified and measured with particular attention to the QoS support defined in the 802.16-2004 standard