BRAN summary
Chairman: Edgard Vangeel (Cisco Systems Belgium)
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BackgroundIn response to growing market demand for low-cost, high capacity radio links, ETSI established a standardization project for Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN) in the spring of 1997, which was turned into an ETSI Technical Committee later on. So ETSI TC BRAN is the successor of the former Sub-Technical Committee RES10 which developed the HIPERLAN/1 specifications. Since then ETSI TC BRAN produce standards and specifications for various Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) technologies in various frequency ranges. This includes documents on new spectrum demand (System Reference Documents), technical specifications, harmonized standards produced under a mandate from the European Commission as well as conformance test specifications (radio and protocol testing). |
The work is carried out in two working groups:
HiperMAN Working Group
This working group produced the standards for HiperLAN2 (a mobile broadband short-range access network), HiperACCESS (a fixed wireless broadband access network) and HiperMAN (a fixed wireless access network which operates below 11 GHz). Work on the latter one continues by streamlining the corresponding PHY and MAC specifications with the IEEE 802.16 standards series. Furthermore, test conformance specifications are created and maintained that intend to ensure interoperability between such systems.
Regulatory Competence Working Group (RCWG)
This working group focus on system reference documents, harmonized standards and other regulatory topics. Standards such as for RLANs operating in the 5 GHz band, for BWA systems operating in the 2,6 GHz, 3,5 GHz and 5,8 GHz bands and for WPAN systems operating in the 60 GHz band have been elaborated here. If new frequency bands are allocated to BWA systems then RCWG will most probably work on corresponding harmonized standards.
Glossary
| ATM | Asynchronous Transfer Mode |
| BWA | Broadband Wireless Access |
| CL | Convergence Layer |
| DLC | Data Link Control |
| ETSI | European Telecommunications Standards Institute |
| HIPERACCESS | HIgh PErformance Radio Access |
| HIPERLAN | HIgh PErformance Radio LAN |
| HIPERMAN | HIgh PErformance Radio Metropolitan Area Networks |
| HS | Harmonized Standard |
| MAC | Medium Access Control (layer) |
| PHY | Physical (layer) |
| RES | Radio Equipment and Systems |
| RLAN | Radio Local Area Access Network |
| TDMA | Time Division Multiple Access |
| WPAN | Wireless Personal Access Networks |
Last updated: 2009-06-10 14:23:25