To drive system performance and interoperability of smart antenna systems, Navini Networks, Beceem Communications, Fujitsu Microelectronics America and Runcom have jointly announced the formation of “SMart Antenna RF Test” (SMART) Alliance. This alliance has been formed to promote the adoption and implementation of beamforming (BF) and Beamformed MIMO (BF + MIMO) which are included in the 802.16e-2005 specification published by the IEEE and adopted by the WiMAX Forum for mobile WiMAX certification under Wave 2.

“The capacity and coverage benefits of combining beamforming with MIMO are very compelling, offering up to double the capacity with twice the coverage of non-beamformed systems,” said Sai Subramanian, Navini’s vice president of product management. “This Alliance ensures broad availability of CPE devices that have full capability of BF and B + MIMO.”

The SMART Alliance will publish a system performance baseline for the mandatory smart antenna features adopted by the WiMAX Forum1 for mobile WiMAX. The founding charter members of the SMART alliance are:
Navini Networks. Navini leads the Beamforming task group, part of the Certification Working Group in the WiMAX Forum.
Beceem Communications. A smart antenna proponent in the IEEE and WiMAX Forum working groups, Beceem was the first to offer a commercial mobile WiMAX terminal chipset that supports the WiMAX Forum Wave 2 smart antenna feature set.
Fujitsu Microelectronics America. The company recently participated in the first multivendor interoperability demonstration of Beamformed MIMO over smart WiMAX, in partnership with Navini. It is a member of the BF task group in the WiMAX Forum’s Certification Working group.
Runcom Technologies. Runcom has long been a supporter of BF and MIMO for obtaining improved overall performance of WiMAX.

Meanwhile, the alliance members will collaborate on implementation details to optimize performance and open their field testing labs to other members for performance interoperability testing. Performance test results will be shared to ensure smart antenna technology deployments of the highest possible system performance while maintaining compatibility with the WiMAX Forum profiles and certified products. According to the SMART Alliance members, it will not replace or alter the tests and certification processes already defined or planned by the WiMAX Forum, but will supplement them to ensure that multi-vendor products with BF + MIMO can be implemented with predictable performance and full interoperability.

The WiMAX Forum’s certification testing is limited to proving multi-vendor interoperability through conformance to a defined profile specification, according to SMART Alliance. The SMART alliance is open to all WiMAX Forum members interested in the benefits of smart antenna systems.

Concurrently, to penetrate the broadband WiMAX market, networking equipment giant Cisco Systems has acquired the Richardson, Tx based Navini Networks for a sum of $330 million. As a result, Navini joins Cisco’s wireless networking business unit.

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