Threats: Threats to WiMAX

Most of the experts and professionals claiming that broadband data delivered over 3G cellular networks will choke the hope of the WiMAX industry for the standard to become worldwide significant. There are too many factors involved in weakening WiMax security, stability, Quality of service etc. In this chapter I am going to discuss the threats involved in WiMax deployment and in the infrastructure after that.

A WiMax wireless access network consists of base stations and mobile stations (MSs). The base stations provide network add-on to the mobile stations. As a serving base station, a mobile station selects the one which offers the strongest signal. At this point, the subscriber plays the role of the user while a base station and a collection of served mobile stations play the role of system.

The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and physical layer are two most important layers of protocol architecture of WiMax. Common Part sub layer is the essential part of WiMax layered architecture. In this layer, MAC Protocol Data Units (PDUs) are constructed, connections are established and bandwidth is managed. The Common Part (CP) exchanges MAC Service Data Units (SDUs) with the Convergence layer. The Security sub layer is tightly integrated with Common Part. The Security sub layer addresses authentication, establishment of keys and encryption. The Security sub layer exchanges MAC PDUs with the Physical layer. The Convergence layer adapts units of data of higher level protocols to the MAC SDU format, and vice versa. The Convergence layer also sorts the incoming MAC SDUs by the connections to which they belong. The Physical layer is a two-way mapping between MAC PDUs and Physical layer frames received and transmitted through coding and modulation of radio frequency signals. (Michel Barbeau, 2005)