LTE VS. WIMAX: A CASE STUDY

Abstract: The increasing use of wireless devices and in particular cell phones has led for the need of greater capacity and higher speed than the present wireless network technologies. Hence, Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) has become the two foremost technologies. Cell phone services are rapidly shifting from voice services to data and from circuit-switching to packet-switching ones. The prior readiness of the WiMAX technology has already given it its edge over the LTE. Competition between the two is evened by the absences in considerable roll out plans due to cost factors of WiMAX. The goals for LTE indicate bandwidth as high as 100Mbps on the downlink, and up to 50Mbps on the uplink. However, this possible increase in bandwidth is just a minor part of the overall advancements, which LTE aims to provide. Keeping in the view the importance of the LTE & the WiMAX this study illustrates the comparison of these two technologies using the NS-3 network simulator. The evaluation of the network performance for two technologies is done on the basis of Quality of Service parameters which includes throughput, average jitter and packet lost. From simulation results, it is evident that with lesser node traffics the LTE works a little better but as the nodes traffic increases WiMAX starts to perform better. Throughput between 100 to 150 nodes both technologies are similar but beyond 150 nodes WiMAX performed better.

Keywords: 4th Generation (4G), Network Simulator-3 (NS-3), Long Term Evolution (LTE), Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) Technologies.