Spectral efficiency assessment and radio performance comparison between LTE and WiMAX

This paper provides a detailed performance comparison between both upcoming OFDM based mobile technologies for broadband radio access -3GPP UTRA LTE and mobile WiMAX (IEEE 802.16e). Based on link level simulation results, key performance indicators like physical layer throughput have been evaluated for different channel conditions and different modulation and coding schemes (MCS). Besides SISO, both MIMO 2 times 2 diversity and MIMO 2 times 2 spatial multiplexing scenarios have been investigated showing very promising results for the downlink direction. A thorough analysis has been presented highlighting the differences of both competing technologies and their impacts on spectral efficiency and radio performance. For this, in a first assessment, system parameters have been aligned towards equal peak throughput per MCS to show the technology specific behavior under different SNIR conditions. In a second assessment, full 3GPP and IEEE standard compliant system configurations have been ranked including for example typical layer one overhead. It has been shown that WiMAX as well as LTE prove to be state of the art technologies, with excellent performance but with certain advantages and disadvantages on both sides. The overall radio performance, however, is rather equal, thus clear-cut performance statements have to be based on higher layer design and even on network level.