Testing of Mobile WiMAX in Finland completed

June 10, 2016

The first Mobile WiMAX field testing in Finland has been carried out in Savonlinna.

Part of a larger Mobile WiMAX technology study initiated by ten Finnish broadband operators, the field test was run by local telephone company SPY Ltd and consultancy company Omnitele Ltd in collaboration with network company Daimler Finland Ltd.

The equipment used in the field tests was Alvarion’s 4Motion® solution with its IEEE 802.16e compliant BreezeMax® as radio access network platform.

Mobile WiMAX offers faster Mobile Broadband Access to enable Personal Broadband services.

The Mobile WiMAX pilot network was hosted by Savonlinna Telephone Company (SPY).

SPY currently offers fixed WiMAX broadband services in both rural and urban areas to private households, businesses and summer residents.

A Mobile WiMAX network was set up for testing purposes in the city centre.

The field trial included measuring data transfer rates in different radio environments, handover, response times and coverage.

The Mobile WiMAX project was commissioned by ten Finnish broadband service providers and supported by Omnitele Ltd, a Finnish wireless communications consulting firm.

The project aimed at giving a comprehensive view of WiMAX technology and the current market situation, in order to position WiMAX in the technology portfolio of the operators in the coming years.

Omnitele acted in the role of project planner and independent supervisor of the field testing.

“The target of the field testing was to test the performance and functionality of a Mobile WiMAX system from both an operator and end users points of view,” said Senior Consultant Jouni Salmi of Omnitele. “Alvarion provided unbiased testing in a real network environment as proposed by this project.

The most anticipated feature of the 802-16e system being full mobility, this was naturally one of the key features to which we were giving special attention during the tests.

In the Alvarion system both intra and inter base station handovers worked flawlessly.

Handovers were seamless, totally invisible for the common user.

In addition, downloads rates of 6 Mbit/s were achieved with very low latency times.

Even mission critical voice applications such as SIP, as well as video streaming, were functioning fully to our satisfaction”, Jouni Salmi of Omnitele reports.

“Overall the test was a success,” concludes Business Area Manager Mikko Torniainen of Savonlinna Telephone Company. “We were positively surprised by the seamless handover when driving a car from one base station sector to another. The connections stayed intact even when going at speeds of more than 80 km/h, in fact they were as stable as in a fixed terminal.

Although we knew that Mobile WiMAX mitigates multipath propagation and scattering very efficiently, the coverage over long distances of the CPE surpassed our expectations. The terminals used in the field trial were Alvarion PCMCIA Cards for laptops with integral antennas only.

Adaptive modulation and coding performed constantly, keeping to the optimal modulation and coding scheme as the radio environment changed. Mission critical services were also part of the test. The Alvarion system worked with applications such as VoIP, Skype, SIP and video streaming,” says Mikko Torniainen.

The experiences gained during the field trial are of great importance when considering the deployment of Mobile WiMAX in new areas.

Daimler Finland is Alvarion’s long time partner.

The company has delivered up to 25 WiMAX networks conforming with the 802.16d standard to telecom operators and energy companies in Finland and Estonia.

Currently Finland has approximately 15,000 WiMAX users in several different regions.

The testing network was run on the 3.5 GHz spectrum with 5 MHz channel bandwidth.

Alvarion’s Mobile WiMAX solution is designed to comply with the WiMAX Forum™ Network Working Group specifications.

The pilot network consisted of two-sector base stations and laptops equipped with Alvarion PCMCIA Cards were used as terminals.