International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM

LTE AND WIMAX FUTURE TECHNOLOGY: A COMPREHENSIVE

SURVEY
Gagandeep Kaur Virk1, Gaganpreet Kaur2
1,2

(Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science,

MMEC, Maharishi Markandeshwar University, Ambala, India)
Abstract Increasing demands for higher
bandwidths and in turn high data rates lead to the
development of fourth generation technologies.
Long - Term Evolution (LTE) and Worldwide
Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX)
are the basis for evolving from third generation
(3G) to fourth generation (4G) telecommunication
services. This paper provides an overview of next
generation telecommunication networks- LTE and
WiMAX. They are compared to each other and
with current telecommunication networks. It also
shows their availability in the world and explains
which of these two networks is superior in which
case and gives an outlook about their successors LTE-Advanced and WiMAX release 2.0.
Keywords LTE; 3G; 4G; WiMAX; LTEAdvanced.
INTRODUCTION
From recent few years telecommunication
authorities are busy deciding how to emerge to 4G
environment motivated by the exponential increase
in the demand for advanced telecommunication
services which require wider spectrum and higher
quality of services. The telecommunication
industry experts on the other hand are trying hard
to standardize new mobile wireless systems that
can cope with the desire and ambitions of
telecommunication users and pave the way for
evolving new technologies known as WiMAX and
LTE.
I.

Long - Term Evolution (LTE) is the global

standard for the fourth generation (4G)
telecommunication services, which is based on
GSM/EDGE
and
UMTS/HSPA
network
technologies.LTE uses carrier bandwidths, from
1.4 MHz up to 20 MHz and the bandwidth to be
used by a particular device depends on the

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frequency band and width of spectrum available to

the network operator. It provides higher data rates
of 300Mbps peak on the downlink and 75 Mbps
peak on the uplink and supports both Frequency
Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex
(TDD).
LTE Advanced evolved from LTE and was
standardized in March 2011. LTE was enhanced to
LTE Advanced to meet the technical requirements
of ITU-R that were specified in its IMT-Advanced
specification because those requirements were not
supported by LTE. So, LTE Advanced is called as
True 4G by ITU. World Radio Communication
Conference proclaimed recently that LTE-A will
practice the accessible spectrum for channels above
20 MHZ geographically. In addition to that it must
be taken care for those areas of the geography in
which channels are not obtainable. There are
numerous recompenses of LTE that comprises:
Topology network
Heterogeneous network with squat power
nodes
New relay nodes
Advancement in low power nodes
Improvement in capacity and coverage
Introduce multicarrier that can set to 100
MHz spectrum.
On the other hand, Worldwide Interoperability
for Microwave Access (WiMAX) is a wireless
communication standard which may provide high
speed data transfer of 30 to 40 megabitper-second
[3] developed in April 2001 under the
specifications of IEEE 802.16 standard. The
architecture of this network also involves the
physical and data transfer layer through which the
data is configured. WiMAX was designed as an
alternative to Cable and Digital Subscriber Line

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International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM
(DSL) to provide broadband internet access. The
WiMAX network is also compatible with 802.11
network topology. The first IEEE 802.16 is now
termed as Fixed WiMAX and later on it got
adopted by other organizations like Wi Fi
Alliance, Wi Bro in Korea [6]. As the time passed
on, revisions in the WiMAX technology has
always been presented by different organizations.
The WiMAX is a solid replacement for the
mobile users. It is sometimes referred to as "Wi-Fi
on steroids" [7]. Previous mobile users were
configured with GSM and CDMA like technology
which is getting replaced rapidly with the
technology like WiMAX & LTE. It is similar to
Wi-Fi, but it can enable usage at much greater
distances [8]. Consequently the use of wireless
microwave backhaul is on the rise in North
America and existing microwave backhaul links in
all regions are being upgraded [9]. Capacities of
between 34 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s [10] are routinely
being deployed with latencies in the order of 1 ms.
The two technologies, WiMAX and LTE,
competed with each other starting from their pre4G versions and continued with their 4G versions
while having much in common. It looks like that
finally WiMAX gave up the competition and
selected to harmonize and integrate with LTE in its
future harmonized WiMAX advanced standard
supporting multiple access technologies. This
work addresses the technical similarities and
differences between the two technologies trying to
pinpoint those differences that advantage one
technology over the other. Other factors like
commercial, historical, political, etc. which might
advantage one technology over the other
technology are also exploited.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows:
Section II presents the comparative components of
both LTE and WiMAX. Section III discusses some
of the main technical differences between the two
technologies, while Section IV discusses the
security factors that favor one or the other
technology and finally Section V discusses the
future of both technologies followed by the
conclusions in Section VI.

COMPARARTIVE COMPONENTS OF
LTE AND WIMAX
II.

LTE
LTE system entails of Radio Link Control
(RLC), MAC, PHY, Radio Resource Control
(RRC) and Transceiver. These are associated with
logical, transport, physical channels. Physical layer
transport channels compromise communication to
MAC or higher channels. LTE logical channels are
offered by MAC.
A.

Figure.1 LTE: Layer Architecture

The system model can be described as:

LTE networks with heterogeneous QoS services
are addressed here. Constant Bit Rate (CBR) and
Best Effort (BE) has been taken into consideration.
The sets of cells, total users, CBR users and BE
users are considered N, K, C and B respectively. It
can be easily seen that
K=CB

(1)

An assignment indicator can be denoted as I t, k

(t) which is equal to 1 when K is served in time t
and 0 otherwise. Time t can be used as load
balancing time, which is the time span between 1
and t+1, and is of size 1 ms.
The system model can be described by showing
mapping between load and throughput, this can be
represented as:
R (S I N Ru) = log2 ( 1 + S I N Ru)
Where SIN Ru is Signal to Noise Ratio and
amount of bandwidth required will be:
Nu = Du / (R (S I N Ru). BW)

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(2)
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International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM
Where Nu is the addictive Gaussian noise.
Since load balancing is periodically done on large
scale, we use E (S I N R (t)) to represent
expectation of SINRu between time ( t-1, t), thus
average bandwidth can be recognized as:
E I, k (t) = log2 (1 + E [SIN R I,k (t) ]) [bps/hz]

this on international level HUAWEI [13],

MOTOROLA are one of the major vendors. These
vendors can configure the gateways for indoor as
well as outdoor. The vendor might configure the
following for the WiMAX access point.
1) ETHERNET PORT SYSTEM
2) WI-FI HUB

For K users, resource allocation depends on the

QoS parameters.

3) ANALOG TELEPHONE
4) SATELLITE DISH
c) External modems
A USB flash drive can also cat as a WiMAX
access point. USB devices mode opts this kind of
service for the internet access.USB can provide
connectivity to a WiMAX network through what is
called a dongle [14].

Figure.2 Network model with heterogeneous users

B. WIMAX
Components which are related to WiMAX are
described below [11].
a) Subscriber Station
Subscriber Station is one who provides
connectivity to WiMAX technology. They are also
termed as SS. The SS can be used in the following
item sets
1) Hand Sets (Much similar to the smart
phones)
2) PC cards or USB dongles
3) MP3 players
b) Gateways
A gateway allows you to transfer the data from
one end to another. Service providers in India like
BSNL, Airtel, Idea, and Reliance are the major
vendors for such kind of services. WiMAX
gateway devices are available in both indoor and
outdoor versions from several manufacturers
including Vecima Networks, Alvarion, Airspan,
ZyXel, Huawei, and Motorola [12]. In addition to
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d) Mobile phones
HTC announced the first WiMAX enabled
mobile phone, the Max 4G, on November 12,
2008.WiMAX is a supplement to the IEEE
Standard 802.16-2004 [15]. There were around 1.7
million pre-WiMAX and WiMAX customers in
Asia - 29% of the overall market - compared to 1.4
million in the USA and Canada [16].
e) Triple Play
WiMAX supports technologies that offer triple
play services. On May 7, 2008 in the United
States, Sprint Nextel, Google, Intel, Comcast,
Bright House, and Time Warner announced a
pooling of an average of 120 MHz of spectrum
and merged with Clearwire to market the service
[18].
f) IEEE 802.16 Standard
WiMAX uses IEEE 802.16 Standard.
SOFDMA (used in 802.16e-2005) and OFDM256
(802.16d) are not compatible thus equipments will
have to be replaced if an operator is to move to the
later standard (e.g., Fixed WiMAX to Mobile
WiMAX).
g) Integration with IP based network

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International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM
WiMAX can be merged with IP based network,
as stated by ISP providers. There is a proposal
called WiMAX proposal forum that wants
connections between some layers:

ASN: Access Service Network

BS: Base station, part of the ASN

ASN-GW: ASN Gateway, part of the

ASN

TABLE.I
S.No
1

Technical Differences

Feature

Property

Duplex Mode

Both

LTE

and

WiMAX

provide for both TDD and

FDD. However, FDD was the
focus of all telecom companies
and continued throughout the
different generations. TD-LTE

CSN: Connectivity Service Network

is

HA: Home Agent, part of the CSN

migration

AAA: Authentication, Authorization

and accounting Server, part of the CSN.

gaining

popularity
path

of

as
the

synchronous CDMA of China

3G. Wi- MAX, on the other
hand,

had

TDD

focus

throughout.
2

Spectrum

Legacy

LTE

and

LTE

Advanced use Licensed IMT2000 bands like 700, 900,

1800, 2100, and 2600 MHz
while

legacy

WiMAX

is

Licensed & unlicensed, at 2.3,

2.5, 3.5 and 5.8 GHz bands.
Thus

LTE

available

at

is

generally

preferred

low

frequency band which gives it

coverage advantage.

Figure.3 WiMAX Network Architecture

III. TECHNICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LTE
AND WIMAX

Inter-carrier

LTE uses a standard 15 KHz

Spacing

inter-carrier

As can be deduced from the previous section,

there are lots of technical similarities between the
two technologies in architecture and targets. Both
uses OFDMA [19] with flat-IP architecture and
both are meant to meet or even surpass IMTAdvanced requirements with similar technologies.
Nevertheless, a number of technical differences
exist. Some of these differences with mobile
WiMAX (WiMAX 1.0) compared to LTE and
WiMAX 2.0 compared to LTE-Advanced are the
following:

spacing

while

WiMAX 2.0 uses 10.94 KHz.

The larger the inter-carrier
spacing,

the

immunity
spread.

higher

against
LTE

can

the

Doppler
handle

mobility speeds up to 350

km/hr while WiMAX can
support speeds of the order of
120 km/hr and WiMAX 2.0 up
to 350 km/hr.
4

Access

LTE

Advanced

access

Technology

technology for its downlink

(OFDMA) is different from its

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International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM
uplink.

In

uplink,

Single

Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) is

used.

SC-FDMA

reduces

Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio
(PAPR) by 3 - 5 dB giving rise
to uplink improvements that
can be utilized to improve
coverage or throughputs of cell
edge

users.

802.16m

uses

SOFDMA for both uplink and

downlink. In fact, the major
problem in extending GSM
TDMA and wideband CDMA
to

broadband

systems

is

increased receiver complexity

with

multipath

signal

reception.
5

Fast

Fourier

Transform
(FFT) -Size
6

Mobility

Large dF required against

Doppler => higher velocity in
LTE.
LTE is fully embedded in the

EAP_TTLS protocol, the enterprise security

credentials can be integrated seamlessly.
The LTE have totally different security
mechanisms, which is called AKA. In this
authentication mechanism, only a provisioned and
pre-shared key is authenticated. This is not enough
secure in enterprise environment.
FUTURE OF LTE AND WIMAX
WiMAX had the precedence advantage over
LTE in bringing to light much of the themes
currently adopted such as the flat architecture, all
IP network and TDD structure. 3GPP on the other
hand, moved from all circuit switched of 2G,
through half packetized of 2.5G and 3G and finally
to all IP in LTE and LTE-Advanced. The objective
of telecom companies from the start was big
customer base, public networks and wide coverage
while WiMAX headed to serve vertical segments
requesting broadband. This, together with the
previously discussed factors, made WiMAX people
realize that the ecosystem of WiMAX as a standalone technology cannot continue to compete with
3GPP stream and attractive LTE. WiMAX forum
had to set plans to proceed.
V.

3GPP world incl. inter RAT

HO, but WiMAX has less
mobility.

IV. COMPARATIVE STUDY ON

SECURITY
In this section we will compare WiMAX and
LTE with each other on the basis of security
parameters. In an enterprise environment, the
security is very important, and the security
requirements contain two aspects: 1) the device
that will be connected to IT network must be
authenticated; 2) the users that want to use IT
service must be authenticated. To meet these two
main requirements, enterprise security credentials
like identity, certificates, username and password,
are required to be authenticated. To authenticate
these credentials, security infrastructures, such as
Active Directory (AD) server and CA services, are
usually deployed as IT services.

The WiMAX can use both EAP_TLS and

EAP_TTLS protocol to do authentication. In
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CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE

In this paper, the comparison between LTE and
WiMAX technologies has been presented.
WiMAX and LTE have several similarities, but
they differ in their evolution, industry support, and
deployment models. It is interesting to see the role
being played by these two technologies in 4G
market, which aims to achieve mass deployment of
broadband mobile services. This paper results in a
conclusion that WiMAX and LTE can be used as
the next generation of Mobile Enterprise Network.
VI.

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International Journal of Exploring Emerging Trends in Engineering (IJEETE)

Vol. 02, Issue 02, MARCH-APRIL, 2015 WWW.IJEETE.COM

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AUTHORS BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gagandeep Kaur Virk received
her B.Tech degree in CSE from
BFCET, Bathinda, Punjab in 2012
and her M.Tech in CSE from Giani
Zail Singh PTU Campus, Bathinda,
Punjab in 2014. Currently she is
working as Assistant Professor in
MMEC, Mullana
Ambala,
Haryana.

Gaganpreet Kaur received her

B.Tech degree in CSE From AIET,
Faridkot, Punjab in 2012 and her
M.Tech in Software System from
GNDU,Amritsar , Punjab in
2014.Currently she is working as
Assistant Professor in MMEC,
Mullana-Ambala, Haryana.

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