LTE TDD will seal the fate of mobile WiMAX
Mobile WiMAX is an advanced technology that was ahead of its time. However, as Terry Norman, principal analyst with Analysys Mason explores, now that its time has come, so has LTE TDD, which is threatening to displace mobile WiMAX completely.
Organising mobile communications into IP packets is a logical step, given that the data available through the Internet is organised this way and the cost of packet routing equipment is so low. The latest innovation from the 3GPP family of technologies – LTE – is designed to support IP, but WiMAX offered all-IP radio access capabilities long before LTE and HSPA.
Mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e) is a TDD (and FDD) technology – that is, both the uplink and the downlink share the same bandwidth, which is divided into time slots. As a result, regulators do not need to offer a pair of frequency bands for this technology. In addition, operators can divide the time slots in a way that reflects typical web browsing activity – for example, 10% of time slots for the brief requests via the uplink, and 90% for the substantial amounts of data that follow on the downlink. WiMAX is also spectrally flexible. It operates in a number of different carriers: 2.3GHz, 2.5GHz, 3.3GHz, 3.5 GHz and 5GHz and above.
WiMAX is an excellent technology for providing mobile broadband access in the last mile – particularly in countries where the last mile of copper is poor. As a result, mobile WiMAX has found a ready market in developing countries (see Figure 1). Some operators have rolled out flagship deployments in developed markets too – for example, Clearwire in North America and Yota in Russia.
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