WiMAX v LTE-A: battle for the 4G wireless standard ramps up

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 07:46

IT Industry - Strategy

The battle between the cellular and WIMAX camps for future 4G wireless networking standards ramped up this week with the IEEE formally submitting its 802.16m standard (the next iteration of today's 802.16e mobile WiMAX standard) to the ITU as a candidate radio interface technology for IMT-Advanced standardisation.

The cellular camp is proposing the next iteration of LTE (Long term evolution) LTE-Advanced as its candidate technology.

To clear up any confusion: the widespread use of the term '4G' by both the WiMAX and cellular camps to designate, respectively, their current mobile WiMAX and LTE technologies as 4G is a misnomer: officially IMT-advanced will be the first 4G wireless technology. The goal is that it will support peak data rates of 100Mbps for high mobility and 1Gbps for low mobility.

Opinions differ on whether the outcome will see both supported (LTE and 802.16e) are both specified in the current IMT-2000 standard); whether there will be convergence; or whether one will triumph over the other. IMS Research, for one, is backing LTE-A.

According to IEEE, the 802.16m 'Advanced Air Interface' specification under development by the IEEE 802.16 Working Group on Broadband Wireless Access, "meets ITU-R’s challenging and stringent requirements in all four IMT-Advanced 'environments': indoor, microcellular, urban, and high speed." The proposal will be presented at the 3rd Workshop on IMT-Advanced in Dresden on 15 October in conjunction with a meeting of ITU-R Working Party 5D.

The WiMAX Forum, along with 50 companies, have endorsed the IEEE’s submission of 802.16m as a candidate for IMT-Advanced. The WiMAX Forum also said it would finalise its WiMAX Release 2 specification in parallel with IEEE 802.16m and IMT-Advanced, "ensuring that WiMAX Release 2 networks and devices will remain backward compatible with legacy WiMAX Release 1 based on IEEE 802.16e." The WiMAX Forum expects to see WiMAX Release 2 available commercially in the 2011-2012 timeframe.

Ron Resnick, president of the WiMAX Forum, said "There is a broad ecosystem ready to deliver WiMAX as the first IMT-Advanced compliant technology to market. One of our top priorities is to bring WiMAX Forum Certified Release 2 networks and devices to market by the end of 2011. Even better, with double digit WiMAX deployment growth every month, the next release of WiMAX will have an even more substantial installed base upon which to build."
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