At 7/1/2010 09:17 AM, Rogello wrote: >I'm still getting my feet wet with the whole "4G thing" and found this >interesting > >http://www.maravedis-bwa.com/Issues/5.29/Readmore3.html > >(Sorry if it's old news to many...) > >Almost everyone I know is betting (and betting big!) on LTE. The only >ones I know holding out on WiMAX 2 are niche markets in the federal >space or ISPs in Africa.
It's not a fair comparison. Some people (is this especially an American disease?) treat everything as a one-on-one death match, and in this case act as if there were a WiMAX Corp. duking it out with LTE Corp. for market supremacy. But they're just tools. Monturus' article is quite good. He notes how similar the two are. Both are OFDMA, so they share components. WiMAX the spec defines less. It mainly deals with the radio network, and aims at chip-level compatibility. Its design center is TDD (single frequency); early dual-frequency WiMAX was still TDD, just split-frequency half duplex (how lame!). LTE defines a complete cellular ecosystem, the successor to both GSM and CDMA, and thus defines handsets better. It is primarily aimed at FDD licensees, though TDD is theoretically possible. LTE has smart antennas (beamforming, muxing) in the basic spec, while it's an option in WiMAX. So again WiMAX can aim lower in the price curve, and at unlicensed markets, while LTE is all licensed. I wonder how WiMAX would work on 900 MHz. Beamforming base antennas would be rather large, but I could see a market, especially if it nulled out interference. -- Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ +1 617 795 2701 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
