Thursday, 10 April 2008

Motorola Expands wi4 WiMAX Access Point Portfolio

Motorola revealed plans Wednesday of expanding its wi4 WiMAX access point portfolio with the introduction of the new 802.16e Wave 2-ready WAP 450.

The WAP 450 access point uses the recently announced 4G common broadband base control unit. It has a smaller common equipment cabinet and a more powerful tower-top RF module that can improve coverage and capacity by delivering up to 10 watts of power output per sector at the antenna port. The 10 watts of power at the antenna port in WAP 450 is comparable to 20 watts or more power of a traditional ground base station which typically looses half of its power in the RF cables.

The new product will be available in the 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz and 3.5 GHz frequency bands commonly used by WiMAX operators worldwide.

The WAP 450 is WiMAX Wave 2-ready and incorporates diversity antenna techniques which allow the realization of Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) capability offering greater range performance, improved in building penetration along with full mobility support.

According to Motorola, with an ultra light infrastructure, highly integrated design, thin fiber connection that eliminates heavy coaxial cables and operates with very low power consumption, the WAP 450 increases the speed and flexibility of installation, and maintains a simple infrastructure design for operators.

“The WAP 450 also provides performance and cost advantages to operators so they can reduce capital and operating expenditures while extending coverage and enabling more data-rich and bandwidth-intensive applications to satisfy their customers’ demands,” said Adolfo Masini, vice president, Home & Networks Mobility, Motorola Inc.

Motorola currently has 19 WiMAX 802.16e contracts for deployment of various WiMAX solutions in 18 countries worldwide.