Wimax standards and Security The Wimax

Conformance Testing

Conformance testing is the verification that a unit under test (UUT) (i.e., a WiMAX product/implementation, system, or a subsystem) meets the formal requirements of the protocol standard (derived from protocol implementation conformance specifications, PICS). The family of standards related to IEEE
802.16 (IEEE standard for local and metropolitan area networks—Part 16: Air interface for fixed broadband wireless access systems) [9] or ETSI HiperMAN standards apply for conformance testing.
The conformance testing at the vendor site may include several other types of testing, such as functional (unit) testing, performance testing, stress testing, etc. In this section, we focus primarily on the testing conforming to standards. The conformance testing involves the following phases:

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  Regulatory type testing
  
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  Functionality and performance testing for UUT
  

Regulatory type testing verifies whether the UUT meets the regulations of the country where the product is going to be deployed. This type of test- ing may include tests for compliance for RF frequency spectrum usage, RF emission monitoring and control (EMC), specific absorption rate (SAR), and other safety regulations used in that country. Different frequency bands are allocated for WiMAX in different parts of the world, and a country may also impose a limit on the maximum power transmitted at the subscriber station (SS) or the base station (BS). Moreover, different countries may have different limitations on the modulation schemes and channelization used. A regula- tory body in each country decides the approval procedures. For example, in the European Union, the R&TTE directive describes safety (including SAR), RF, and EMC standards; in the United States, the related FCC regulations are 47CFR (Parts 2, 15, 27, 90, etc.).

The functionality and performance testing are needed to verify whether the UUT meets the standards specifications, more specifically, with respect to the following factors:

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  Radio conformance
  
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  Technology family and modulation type (e.g., OFDM/OFDMA, QPSK/16QAM/64QAM)
  
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  Access method (e.g., time division duplexing (TDD)/frequency division duplexing (FDD)); Regulators typically mandate the use of either TDD or FDD
  
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  System capacity, bitrate
  

Several test equipment from commercial vendors are available to help in the WiMAX testing. The test equipment includes spectrum analyzer, vector signal analyzer (VSA), WiMAX protocol conformance tester, radio confor- mance tester, WiMAX protocol sniffer, and WiMAX performance and stress test equipment.

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