2.5 Other 802.16 Standards

In addition to the 802.16e amendment of the 802.16 standard, other amendments have been made or are still in preparation. The goal of these amendments is to improve certain aspects of the system (e.g. have a more efficient handover) or to clarify other aspects (e.g. management information).

The 802.16f amendment, entitled ‘Management Information Base’, was published in December 2005 and provides enhancements to IEEE 802.16-2004, defining a Management Information Base (MIB) for the MAC and PHY and the associated management procedures (see Section 3.6 for more details on 802.16f).

The 802.16g amendment was still at the draft stage in October 2006. The draft is entitled ‘Management Plane Procedures and Services’ and the amendment approval is planned for May 2007 (October 2006 information). It should provide the elements for efficient handover, high-performance QoS (Quality of Service) management and radio resource management procedures.

Other amendments at the draft stage are the following (from the IEEE 802.16 website, July 2006):

802.16/Conformance04 – Protocol Implementation Conformance Statement (PICS) proforma for frequencies below 11 GHz;
802.16k – Media Access Control (MAC) Bridges – Bridging of 802.16.

Amendments at the pre-draft stage are the following:

802.16h – Improved Coexistence Mechanisms for License-Exempt Operation;
802.16i – Mobile Management Information Base, where the objective is to add mobility support to the 802.16f fixed MIB standard.

Work on the 802.16j amendment draft has been reported, which concerns the Multi-hop Mobile Radio (MMR). Hence, 802.16j should provide some enhancement for the Mesh mode. The Project Authorization Request (PAR) of 802.16j was approved in March 2006.