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High data rate, mobility, QoS, vendor independence and interoperability are very important characteristics for the next generation of wireless communication networks. For example mobility support within a homogenous network and between networks of different technologies is a must to have feature for the next generation of wireless networks. The standardization allows vendor independence and interoperability. A technology which was developed to fulfill these characteristics and standardized by IEEE is 802.16, also referred to as WiMAX. The WiMAX is the latest technology aims to have the above characteristics with low deployment costs. WiMAX architecture aims to have high data rates, QoS, long range and low deployment costs to a wireless access technology. In the first phase the standard (802.16d) was released to support fixed terminal but the second release to support mobility. Different releases of the standards specify media access control (MAC) layer and physical (PHY) layer of the WiMAX technology. (14,35).

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Nayef Mendahawi holds a M.Sc. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has over 14 years of experience. He has extensive research background in the areas of VoIP, QoS, WLAN-Cellular integration architecture, 802.11, WiMAX, UMA and IPv6. He is currently working at Research In Motion. He is an author for patents.

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