Higher performance

While both 802.16d and 802.16e standards specify various requirements and optional techniques to enable a high-performing broadband wireless channel, 802.16e, IEEE and the resultant WiMax profiles are expected to extend these requirements and options to guide vendors to further enhancements in capacity, coverage, power reduction, quality of service, and support for rich IP applications.

Capacity

While 802.16d and 802.16e both support a variety of forward error correction techniques to increase the capacity of the broadband wireless system, the first generation of 802.16d products are not expected to implement such high-performing coding techniques. 802.16e products are anticipated to deliver such capabilities from the first shipments.

802.16e also provides subchannelization techniques to more efficiently manage the channel bandwidth among multiple end users. The base station uses subchannelization to optimize scheduling of multiple users having distinct spatial signatures. The various subchannelization schemes offered by 802.16e allows more efficient scheduling of users based on channel quality, priority, power and bandwidth allocation.