The WiMAX Forum is accelerating its development efforts to produce Release 2 equipment based on the upcoming IEEE Standard 802.16m. The new release will offer significant coverage and capacity improvements over WiMAX Release 1. The development timeline for Release 2 targets early engineering trials by mid-2011, with WiMAX Forum certification of equipment by the end of 2011, early commercial availability by mid-2012, and general commercial availability with rich terminal offerings in 2013. Release 2 service offers a low-cost solution with seamless migration from Release 1. The Release 2 base station (BS) will provide full support for Release 1 terminals already deployed using the Release 1 network.

This paper provides basic recommendations for migration from Release 1 to Release 2, assuming that the migration starts from specific typical WiMAX network deployment scenarios.

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