WiMAX Forum (www.WiMAXForum.org) certification testing is ongoing at Cetecom labs in Spain. The first WiMAX Forum Certified products — those that are certified as conformant to the standard, interoperable with other vendors' products, and able to support metropolitan broadband fixed, portable and mobile applications — are expected to be available in the November/December time frame.

Alvarion Ltd. (www.alvarion.com) has successfully completed beta trials of BreezeMAX PRO — an OFDM-based WiMAX-ready, cost-effective customer premises equipment (CPE) that uses the Intel PRO/Wireless 5116 broadband interface chip. Alvarion is now fulfilling orders for the BreezeMAX PRO in volume production quantities for commercial deployments. Its release marks the culmination of a joint development effort with Intel (www.intel.com) that began in 2003.

ArrayComm (www.arraycomm.com) and Intel (www.intel.com) are working to incorporate key requirements into the 802.16 standard that will improve its ability to support smart antenna technology. As part of this collaboration, ArrayComm will develop IEEE 802.16-compliant smart antenna solutions. For its part, Intel plans to support ArrayComm's solution with its future IEEE 802.16e WiMAX client device chipsets; yielding large improvements in overall system range, capacity, and coverage quality for 802.16 networks.

picoChip (www.picochip.com) and the Korean Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute (www.etri.re.kr/) or ETRI, are jointly developing software-defined radio (SDR) technology for WCDMA/HSDPA and WiMAX. This cooperative effort will include development and research into future wireless technologies and involves a team from ETRI working at picoChip's Bath headquarters for a year.