January 2005
Intermediate to advanced
404 pages
12h 29m
English
Wireless wide area networks (WWANs) are very large-scale wireless networks. 802.16 provided coverage in a metropolitan area, say, 10 miles, to a fixed location. A WWAN must provide continuous coverage across a much larger area, such as an entire state or country. And nodes in a WWAN can move and must remain connected. Currently, the only technology that provides this type of coverage is satellite and cell phones. Although satellite technology provides truly global coverage, the current cost makes it impractical for common use. Cell phone technology, on the other hand, is practically ubiquitous and much more affordable. Therefore, we focus on cell-based WWANs in this chapter.
Low-power cells ...