OFDM STANDARDS
Frank, with regard to the question of forums (does anyone say fora any more?) there has been a lot of curiosity about what's going on in the OFDM Forum, and I suppose, in the VOFDM BWIF.
One of the Wi-LAN posters, Howard Wong, decided to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and sent questions to Forum participants. One of attendees, Mr. Nico van Waes, was kind enough to reply, and subsequently, to give permission for his reply to be posted publicly.
Frank, your upstream post notes the different factors that may be at play in such a consortium. Discussing this in emails with some others, they have wondered what the commercial benefit of such a forum is to Wi-LAN, Cisco, or any company who sponsors such a forum.
I don't know what mix of factors, that you alluded to in your upstream post, pertains here; I posted the following:
"What point would there be in everyone fleeing efforts to establish a Cisco-centric OFDM vision, merely to exchange it for a Wi-LAN-centric vision?
That was not the intent: the OFDM Forum brings a consensus-building approach, together with a diverse community, to proposing standards.
Is it the intention of Wi-LAN to help shape, and benefit from, the OFDM Forum? Clearly, yes: while I cannot remember Hatim's exact words, he indicated in the last CC that he hoped to forge commercial deals with members. But equally clear is the wish of Wi-LAN not to subordinate consensus to its own commercial gain.
Obviously, Wi-LAN would not have built the OFDM Forum without perceiving some benefits to itself. At the minimum, those benefits would include a big influence on the standards-making process, and a chance to work with industry leaders on the future of wireless, while alerting others to the significant benefits of its own technology.
This, IMO, gives Wi-LAN and everyone else a better chance than they would have had in a Cisco sponsored forum.
And, to quote from my post a while back:
...in spite of the doubts, the cynicism, the sneers of the Steve Smiths, and the constant negativity, the OFDM Forum continues to grow. Far from being defeated, it shows strength and diversity. The likelihood that it will share a formative influence on standards increases with that growth.
Message 14680022
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Mr. Wong,
You have my permission to post my October 23 email to you on the Silicon Investor Board, but only literally and as a whole.
Could you please let me know on which of the many boards on that web-site you'll be posting this?
After the OFDM Forum's next meeting, I'll work on a FAQ for the FWA-WG's web-page containing both this and other information to keep the Investors better informed. I admit that has been lacking thus far.
Regards,
Nico van Waes, Ph.D.
Chair OFDM Forum FWA-WG
ofdm-forum.com
Nokia Wireless Routers
nwr.nokia.com
-----Original Message-----
From: EXT Howard Wong [mailto:xxxx@home.com]
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2000 9:28 PM
To: Nico Van Waes
Subject: OFDM Forum
Good Evening Mr. van Waes:
I would like your permission to post your E-mail reply to my three questions on the Silicon Investor board. I have passed along your answers and remarks to other people who have an interest in the OFDM Forum and they have found your interpretation of the different OFDM very informative. I know that other people would benefit from this. I will only post what you feel is appropriate. Enclosed is a copy of the E-mail you sent to me on October 23, 2000.
Best regards,
Howard Wong
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Mr.. Wong,
Since I do not know the reason for your inquiry, I must inform you of the following. It is Nokia policy that all official communications be done through our corporate communications office. I can hence answer question two and three on behalf of the OFDM Forum and only give you my personal opinion and some facts on the first. None of it should be construed as official Nokia statements and may not be presented as such.
If you would like to have Nokia's official statement , you will have to contact our corporate communications office:
Nokia Corporate Communications, Americas
6000 Connection Drive
IRVING, TX 75039
USA
Tel. +1 972 894 4573
Fax +1 972 894 4706
Email:
communication.corp@nokia.com
Ad 1: VOFDM and COFDM are forms of OFDM. VOFDM is a Cisco technology. The BWI Forum, which is entirely dictated by Cisco and Broadcom, has the sole aim of promoting VOFDM. VOFDM means Vector OFDM, and is based on using OFDM with multiple transmit and receive chains. Transmit and receive chains are by far the most expensive elements of a wireless device, which makes VOFDM a more expensive solution than single transmit/receive implementations.
As Nokia Wireless Routers, the business unit which I represent, focuses predominantly on the Fixed Wireless Access residential (i.e. single family and home office) market segment, cost is a crucial factor. Therefore, both the nature of the BWI Forum, the origin of the technology, as well as the technology cost would make it difficult for our business unit to support.
As a side note, the BWI Forum was established purely in response to the OFDM Forum, since Cisco and Broadcom, who were invited to the OFDM Forum's kick-off meeting, apparently felt the risk of not being able to convince the Forum of the superiority of VOFDM over other forms of OFDM too high.
COFDM, Coded OFDM, is a technology originating from DVB standards. DVB and FWA have different market segments as target. DVB focuses on video broadcasting, FWA focuses on "Internet" services. Hence joining a DVB Forum would be an odd choice for a FWA oriented business. In an OFDM based FWA standard, coding will be required, both for robustness and privacy, so in a sense it will be Coded OFDM as well. Whether it will be the same coding as in the DVB standards remains to be seen. There are other major drawbacks to the DVB standards when one tries to apply them to FWA, but those are mainly MAC/DLC issues.
The OFDM Forum is open to all forms of OFDM, and hence for Nokia's purposes the best fit, since there is room left to influence and optimize the implementation of OFDM best fitted for our FWA solutions.
Ad 2: Again, there are many implementations of OFDM, VOFDM and COFDM being among them. The OFDM Forum FWA- working group has as goal to drive towards one unique implementation of OFDM for all OFDM-based FWA standards. Although the member companies certainly have an interest in promoting their own implementations, the Forum is open to all implementations (we for example also invited the VOFDM proponents to give a speech at our meetings). The Forum will promote these implementations in IEEE, ETSI etc.., and work to get all FWA-standardizing bodies to accept the same standard, irrespective of what specific implementation it ends up being. The final choice is obviously dictated by the standardization bodies themselves, not by the OFDM Forum. The OFDM Forum FWA working group is not planning on releasing its own specific implementation as standard, like the BWI Forum does, unless the standardization bodies decide on a standard based on a single carrier technology.
Ad 3) The OFDM Forum is confident that the various FWA standardization groups (ETSI BRAN 'FWA < 11 GHz', IEEE 802.16.3, IEEE 802.16.WirelessHUMAN etc..) will select OFDM. That is not the issue. The issue is to make them all select versions of OFDM that are sufficiently similar to be implemented in one chip (in analogy to the IEEE 802.11a and ETSI BRAN HiPerLAN/2 OFDM based Physical layers) . On top of this, we will need to work to get the same spectrum allocated worldwide for these standards. So clearly, we have sufficient challenges left for the OFDM Forum to put its teeth in.
Sincerely,
Nico van Waes, Ph.D.
Chair OFDM Forum FWA-WG
ofdm-forum.com
Nokia Wireless Routers
nwr.nokia.com
-----Original Message-----
From: EXT Howard Wong [mailto:xxxx@home.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2000 8:25 PM
To: Nico Van Waes
Subject: OFDM Forum Principal Member
Good Evening Mr. van Waes:
I would like to ask three questions.
1. Why did Nokia join the OFDM Forum and not VOFDM or COFDM?
2. What advantage does OFDM have over VOFDM and COFDM?
3. Do you feel that OFDM will be a Global standard?
Thank you for your time on this matter.
Howard Wong |
