Airspan's ASN Gateway Solution

 

The IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard calls for the ability to manage subscriber mobility at a number of layers as well as to authenticate, account and apply policy on a per subscriber basis.

 

This is achieved by dividing the WiMAX network into two main parts:

 

• Access Service Network (ASN) and
• Connectivity Service Network (CSN).

 

The ASN consists of the WiMAX base stations and the ASN Gateway. Whereas, the CSN is at the core of the network providing control and management functions such as IMS, DHCP, FTP and AAA.

 

A key element of the ASN is the ASN Gateway, which controls and aggregates the traffic from a large number of WiMAX base stations. It is possible to deploy a network, which is 802.16e-2005 compliant without an ASN gateway providing the wireless access network is used for fixed and nomadic applications only.

 

Airspan's ASN gateway solution is called ControlMAX.

 

The key functions of the ControlMAX are as follows:

 

• MS admission control, service flow control, load control
• Manage handover of MS devices between base stations in the same ASN
• Interface with other ASN gateways in order to ensure handover between ASNs.
• Traffic aggregation and routing
• Radio resource management
• Policy enforcement
• Security management including subscriber and terminal device authentication
• Accounting information
• Connection management

 

ControlMAX is built around a high performance, carrier-class IP networking platform in order to provide a cost-effective solution which is scalable and provides remarkably high levels of availability.