COMPUSOFT, An international journal of advanced computer technology, 3 (3), March-2014 (Volume-III, Issue-III)

ISSN:2320-0790

A Comparative Study of WiMAX and LTE as the

Mobile Enterprise Network
Harshitha.K.Raj1 , Vinod. A.M2
Assistant Professor, Department of CS &E, M.C.E, Hassan
2
Assistant Professor, Department of M .C.A, M.C.E, Hassan
1

Abstract: In recent years, the demand for mobile Internet access has grown significantly. The 3G technology
that promised mobile broadband hasnt been widely successful because of its low transmission rate and high
service costs. The number of 3G subscribers was only around 11 percent of the number of 2G subscribers. To
enable the mobile Internet, the International Telecommunicat ion Unions (ITU) Working Party 5D launched the
International Mobile Teleco mmun ications (IMT)-Advanced initiative, seeking proposals from co mmunicat ion
standards organizations regarding 4G technologies. Mainly based on two technologies: WiMAX refers to the
IEEE 802.16 families of standards, and Long-Term Evo lution (LTE), developed by the 3rd Generat ion
Partnership Project. In co mparison WiMAX and LTE are much more capable, thus presenting themselves as
strong candidates of the mobile technologies for the enterprise known as 4G wireless technologies. WiMAX and
LTE resemble each other in some key aspects . These include operating in licensed spectrum bands, high
capacity, and strong QoS mechanisms. In this paper we first present the concept of WiMAX and LTE issues that
could affect their deployment and adoption as 4G technologies. Secondly we propose an analysis of the
differences between WiMAX and LTE fro m the perspective of enterprise network requirements. And then we
focus on performance metrics derived fro m OPNET modeler release 16 system level simu lator. To perform the
comparison 4 scenarios were developed the first two are fo r 7 cell LTE and 7cell W iMAX networks while the
second two are for 19 cell LTE and 19cell WiMAX networks.
Keywords: WiMAX, LTE, Mobile Enterprise,

Network
architecture and security requirements. Lastly we
discuss about the system level simulation of the
two emerging technologies and compare between
them using OPNET modeller release 16 system
level simu lator. To perform the comparison 4
scenarios were developed the first two are for 7 cell
LTE and 7cell WiMAX networks while the second
two are for 19 cell LTE and 19cell WiMAX
networks.

1. INTRODUCTION
In recent few years teleco mmunication 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
telecommun ication users and pave the way for
evolving new technologies known as WiMAX and
LTE.

2. STANDARDS DEVELOPMENT AND

STATUS
Figure 3 shows the evolution of the WiMAX and
LTE standards. All of the standards in Figure 3
were developed by either 3GPP or IEEE.

WiMAX and LTE resemb les each other in some

key aspects including having pure IP arch itecture,
including operating in licensed spectrum bands,
high capacity, and strong QoS mechanisms. Both
technologies differ fro m each other in certain other
aspects. In this paper firstly we will d iscuss about
concept of WiMAX and LTE. Secondly we discuss
about an analysis of the differences between
WiMAX and LTE fro m the perspective of
enterprise network requirements by including their

2.1 Wi MAX
IEEE developed the IEEE 802.16 standards, which
include notably IEEE 802.16-2004, the first major
WiMAX standard for fixed access. This was
superseded by IEEE 802.16e-2005, known as
Mobile WiMAX, wh ich is used to provide both
fixed and mobile access. In October 2009, the IEEE
802.16 Working Group submitted its proposal for

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IMT-Advanced based on IEEE 802.16m, wh ich

enhances IEEE 802.16e -2005 to meet the IMTAdvanced requirements. The WiMAX Forum,
which co mprises more than 300 co mpanies fro m
the computer and telecommunications industries
certifies interoperability of W iMAX products from
various vendors and has been working to secure
spectrum around the globe for WiMAX
deployment.
Figure 2: LTE System Architecture.

Furthermore, hundreds of WiMAX networks have

been commercially deployed around the world. The
WiMAX is shown in Figure 1.

2.3 Evolution of Wi MAX and LTE

Both technologies are technically very similar in
their ways of transmitting signals and data rates.
Both LTE and WiMAX use MIMO. Both systems
also use OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing), a technology that supports streaming
video and multimedia. OFDM is a mature and
highly proven technology that works by separating
the signal into mult iple frequencies narrow, with
bits of data sent at the same time. The CDMAbased technologies are used because they had very
different
modulation
schemes
and
were
incompatib le.

Figure 1: WiMAX System Architecture

2.2 LTE

Figure 3: The Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX

standards development. 3GPP2 is an organization structured
similar to 3GPP. Evolution Data Optimized (EVDO) was
developed to target IMT -2000 (3G) and is considered a
predecessor of LTE.

3GPPs LTE standard evolved from the HighSpeed Packet Access cellular standards. 3GPP
comprises several international standardizations
bodies from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea,
and China. The 3GPP partner fro m the US is the
Alliance
for
Teleco mmunications
Industry
Solutions. The LTE standard is officially known as
document 3GPP Release 8. LTE Release 8
almost achieves full compliance with IMTAdvanced requirements, so some call it 3.9G. In
September 2009, 3GPP submitted its LTEAdvanced proposal for IMT-Advanced, officially
called document 3GPP Release 10. Swedish
telecom operator Telia Sonera launched the first
commercial deployments of LTE in Stockholm,
Sweden and Oslo, Norway in December 2009.
Stockholms network was supplied by Ericsson
while Oslos network was supplied by Huawei. The
modems were supplied by Samsung. The LTE is
shown in Figure 2.

2.4 Quality of Service Oriented Resource

Allocation
Both WiMAX and LTE aim to support quality of
service (QoS), allocating bandwidth to users to
satisfy their streaming audio or video. Because
LTE evolved fro m cellu lar standards, the QoSbased approach was both necessary and natural; a
voice conversation requires sufficient resource
allocation. Yet WiMAX also supports QoS. In fact,
both WiMAX and LTE use reservation-based
access, meaning they use frames to reserve
resources for a connection (see Figure 4). WiMAX
divides the time into frames. The duration of a
WiMAX frame ranges from 2 to 20 ms each frame
consists of downlink and uplink portions. The
downlink traffic goes from the base station to a

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subscriber station or mobile station. The uplink

traffic goes from a mobile or subscriber station to
the base station. At a frames start, the base station
transmits the downlink map and uplink map. These
maps specify the resource allocation during a frame
(see Figure 4a).

WiMAX and LTE have several similarities, yet

they differ in their evolut ion, industry support, and
deployment models (see Table 1). It will be
interesting to see what role these two technologies
play in the 4G market, which aims to achieve mass
deployment of broadband mobile services.

LTE similarly divides the time into frames (see

Figure 4b). Each frame lasts 10 ms and consists of
10 sub frames of 1 ms each. Sub frames 0 and 5 are
always reserved for downlink. This lets the base
station transmit any special information to manage
the subsequent transmissions. LTE also uses a
concept called switch point; it designates when the
transmission will switch between the downlink and
uplink. This can happen mult iple times in a frame.
For examp le, in Figure 4b, theres a switch point at
sub frame 1. Th is means that sub frame 0 is a
downlink and that sub frame 1 starts with a
downlink, continues with a guard period, and
fin ishes with an uplink. Sub frames 2, 3, and 4
continue the uplink until we reach sub frame 5,
which is a downlink. In the second half of the
frame, sub frames 5 and 6 are downlink and sub
frames 8 and 9 are uplink. A clos er look at the
resource allocation in WiMAX and LTE hints at
the type of traffic occurring in these two
technologies. LTEs switch point method offers a
more dynamic way of allocating traffic, because we
can switch from an uplink to a downlin k several
times in a frame. Again, LTEs cellular background
likely inspired this, since a cell phone conversation
could have an equal amount of traffic going fro m
one end to the other. Switching between uplink and
downlink supports the traffic in both directions
with little delay. A lthough WiMAX is also flexible
and can allocate the traffic between uplin k and
downlink in any rat io, its heritage is networking
standards. The downlink traffic fro m the Internet to
a computer typically exceeds the uplink traffic
fro m a computer to the Internet. However, both
WiMAX and LTE adequately support voice and
data traffic.

WIMAX

LTE

Current
Deployment

M ore than 500

networks

Only 1 network

Support

IEEE and
computer
companies,
support from
telecommunicatio
ns companies

Telecommunication
s companies and
international
standard bodies

Performance

Similar data
rates, mobility
support and
latency

Special
technical
feature

--------------------

Innovative SCFDM A uplink

saves battery power

Strategy of
targeting
emerging markets
and developing a
relays standard
could prove
beneficial

-------

Strength

Leverages wide
deployment, so it
could remain a
4G technology
even if LTE
gathers more
support from now
on

Benefits from the

support of
telecommunications
companies because
it evolved from
previous
telecommunications
standards

M ajor
benefit from
IMTAdvanced
proposal

Taking a chunk
of the mobile
market, which
was typically
telecommunicatio
ns territory

3GPP continues to
lead mobile
technology in the
new era of
broadband services

Support of
emerging
market

Table 1: WIMAX v/s LTE

3. COMPARATIVE STUDY ON
NETWORK ARCHIT ECTURE
This section will introduce the details of our
comparative studies between WiMAX and LTE on
architecture viewpoints.

Figure 4: Both WiMAX and LTE employ reservation-based

access using the concept of frames. Frames in (a) WiMAX (the
different colors represent different users) and (b) LTE standards.

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3.1 Comparisons between Wi MAX and LTE

Based on the Network Architecture

usually include identity, certificates, username and

password, are required to be authenticated.
To authenticate these credentials, security
infrastructures, such as AD server and CA, are
usually deployed as IT services.

The WiMAX and LTE has similar network

architecture as shown in Figure 5 and Figure 6. The
involved LTE includes enodeB, which performs the
air interface and radio management functions
behind the enodeB, HSS, which perform the
authentication functions, S-GW, wh ich perform the
data delivery functions behind enodeB, and P-GW,
which is used to connect the LTE network to
external network. In LTE arch itecture, it is same as
WiMAX network, all devices are plugged into the
IT backbone directly, and they can communicate
with each other and with other IT services such as
DHCP server, AD server and CA server etc.
Co mparing with the integrate functions of LTE
MME and S-GW are similar with ASN GW; the
LTE HSS is similar with AAA server and LTE PGW is similar with HA server.

4.1 Wi MAX Security Models for the Enterprise

The WiMAX can use both EAP_TLS and
EAP_TTLS protocol to do authentication. In
EAP_TTLS protocol, the enterprise security
credentials that introduced can be integrated into
seamlessly. Figure 7 illustrates the details of the
authentication process. In mobile station side, the
enterprise security credentials are provisioned, and
in AAA server side, the AAA server is integrated to
Intel AD server and CA, so that the AAA server
can verify the real enterprise credentials.
The EAP_TTLS protocol is standard protocols, and
no any changes to software and the protocol.

Figure 5: WiMAX network in IT environment.

Figure 7: WiMAX authentication process.

4.2 LTE Security Models for the Enterprise

The LTE have totally different security
mechanis ms, 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. In this paper, we
introduced an enhanced-AKA authentication
method, which can authenticate all enterprise
credentials.
The detailed processes are illustrated in Figure 8.
There nine steps in this authentication method.
1. The authentication process starts by
authentication server sending EAP-request/identity
message to supplicant.
2. The supplicant responses by replying the EAPResponse/identity message containing identity and
NAI.
3. Upon receipt of the EAP-Response/identity, the
authentication server retrieves the supplicants
certificate fro m the supplicants repository.

Figure 6: LTE network in IT environment.

4. COMPARATIVE STUDY ON S ECURITY

In this section we will co mpare W iMAX and LTE
with each other on security. 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,

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4. The authentication server generates the EAPrequest/ AKA challenging message using the
standard AKA way.
5. The authentication server sends the EAP-request/
AKA
challenging
message encrypted
by
supplicants public key to supplicant.
6. The supplicants decrypts EAP-request/AKA
challenging message using its own private key.
7. The supplicant sends the EAP-Response/AKA
challenge message to the authentication server.
8. The authentication server decrypts the
informat ion using servers private key.
9. If the message is correct, the EAP server sends
the EAP-success message to the supplicant.

5.1 OPNET LTE Network Simulations

Figure 9 shows the proposed LTE 7 -cell structure
and Figure 10 shows the proposed LTE 19-cell
structure the two systems are constructed according
to figure 2. The system main parts are: the user
equipment UE, the access network E-UTRAN
which consists of enhanced node B (eNB) and the
X2 interface between them, and the evolved packet
system (EPC) which comprises the mobility
management entity (MME) and the serving
gateway (ASN S-GW ).

Figure 9: Proposed LTE-7 cell Network.

Figure 8: Enhanced LTE authentication process.

5. SIMULATION PLATFORM
US ING OPNET MODEL ER 16
OPNET modeller version 16 simulator is a packet
based event driven dynamic system level simu lator
which accurately and efficiently simu late the
behaviour of various types of real world networks.
OPNET Modeler is a product of the OPNET
Technologies Inc. It has a Graphical User Interface
(GUI) with a "user friendly" sense. It has an
enormous library at the service of the user. In this
paper, "OPNET Modeler version 16" was available
under license. We will use this simulator to
simu late the two systems; LTE and WiMAX with
the purpose to compare their perfo rmance.
Using OPNET modeler 16 we developed four
scenarios; two of them are for L TE networks (one
for 7 -cell network structure and the other for 19cell networks structure). The other two scenarios
are for WiMA X networks (one for 7-cell network
structure and the other for 19-cell networks
structure).

Figure 10 : Proposed LTE-19 cell Network.

5.2 OPNET Wi MAX Network Simul ation

Figure 11 shows the proposed WiMAX 7-cell
structure network and Figure 12 shows the
proposed 19-cell WiMAX network.

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REFERENCES
[1] W iMAX vs. LTE Zakhia Abichar and J.
Morris Chang, Iowa State University Chau-Yun
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[3 ]LTE: The Evolution of Mobile Broadband,
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[4] The LTE/SA E Trial Init iative: Taking
LTE/ SAE fro m Specification to Rollout, J.
Robson, IEEE Co mm., vol. 47, no. 4, 2009, pp.
82 88.

Figure 11: Proposed WiMAX-7 cell Network.

[5] A comparative study of WiMAX and LTE as

next generation Mobile enterprise network. Leo
Yi, Kai M iao, Adrian Liu; Depart ment of IT
research, Beijing, China, 100190.
[6] RFC3748:Extensible Authentication Protocol.
[7] RFC5281: Extensible Authentication Protocol
Tunnelled Transport Layer security Authentication
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[8] 3G System Architecture Evolut ion (SAE):
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modeler (release 16). Eng. Mohammed Torad, Dr.
Ahmed EI Qassas, Prof Dr. Had ia Al Henawi,
Egypt.

Figure 12: Proposed WiMAX -19 cell Network.

6. CONCLUS ION
In this paper we presented a comparison between
LTE and WiMAX networks.WiMAX and LTE
have several similarit ies, but they differ in their
evolution, industry support, and deployment
models. It is interesting to see what the role is
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.
These can also meet security enterprise by the
authentication process.
In this paper we also presented the standard
models of the two systems in compliance with their
respective standards, and then we discussed the
methodologies adopted by OPNET modeler wh ile
building the simulat ion models of the two
competing systems.

[10] http://www.opnet.com.
[11] LTE system level simu lator documentation
v1.0r295"a documentation on how to use the Long
Term Evolution (LTE) System Level simu lator
http://www.nttuwien.ac.at lltesimu lator.
[12] WIMAX foru m, "mobile WIMAX - part I:
technical overview and performance evaluation"
WIMAX foru m publications, August 2006.
[13]3GPP TR 36.913, "Requirements for Further
Advancements for E-UTRA," v.8.0.1, March 2009.
[14] 3GPP TS 36.213, "Physical layer procedures,"
v.8.6.0, March2009.
[15] 3GPP TS 36.211, "Long Term Evolution
physical layer; General description," v.8.6.0, March
2009.

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