Leveraging WiMAX into LTE Success

By Todd Mersch, Director of Product Line Management

In business and technology, inflection points are a rare occurrence. Furthermore, the identification of inflection
points while they are still in progress is even rarer. The mobile broadband industry is at one of these
exceptional inflection points right now, but my chief concern is that parties on both sides of the competitive
fence will get stubborn and miss the opportunity in front of them.

The “inflection point” I reference is the bifurcation of markets that thirst for the next generation of mobile
broadband serviced both by WiMAX and Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology.

For those involved in either WiMAX or LTE, the recent past has more often than not been a focused debate
about which of these Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)-based radio technologies is better
than the other. I am not here to espouse the technical superiority of one or the other. The fact is, both WiMAX
and LTE are finding their place in the market and both will enjoy deployments.

However, it is an undeniable fact that there is unprecedented global alignment from mobile operators
throughout the world behind the LTE standard. In fact, there are dozens of announced LTE migration plans. As
such, WiMAX-only solution providers stand to miss out on this massive market opportunity if they do not
evolve their WiMAX solutions to LTE – and soon.

The good news is that for a WiMAX radio access network (RAN) equipment provider, the creation of an LTE
solution is -- pardon the pun -- an evolution of their WiMAX portfolio, not a complete do-over. However, time is
of the essence since the very public plans of Verizon in the United States and NTT DoCoMo in Japan are
spurring a flurry of activity by competing operators who do not want to be left behind. The opportunity is there
for WiMAX companies to leverage their real-world expertise in deploying OFDM networks, their proven OFDM
intellectual property, and their existing economies of scale from on-going WiMAX design wins in order to
differentiate themselves from the traditional Tier 1 Network Equipment Providers (NEPs) who often dominate
the GSM landscape.

So what does it take to evolve a WiMAX base station to LTE? There are two key areas of focus. The first is the
radio and physical layer (PHY) subsystem and the second is the upper-layer protocols and security aspects.
The remainder of this article examines the necessary modifications and areas of re-use for both of these
subsystems.

Radio and PHY Subsystems

The radio and PHY subsystems from WiMAX and LTE are, simply put, very similar. They share a common
underlying technology, OFDM, and the migration of the existing WiMAX radio and PHY to an LTE version is
not as significant a transition as one might imagine. Key similarities between a WiMAX and LTE radio and
physical layer are as follows:

1. OFDMA Downlink: both WiMAX and LTE utilize the same transmission techniques in the downlink
direction, including support for 64QAM modulation
2. MIMO Support: both WiMAX and LTE utilize multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radio technology to
increase bandwidth and reduce signal-to-noise ratio
3. Overlap in channel and frequency ranges: both support 5MHz and 10MHz channel bandwidths and
transmission in frequency bands in the 2GHz range
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However, despite these commonalities there are modifications required to transition from a WiMAX radio and
PHY subsystem to an LTE one. Interestingly, in a lot of cases these enhancements align with the move from
Mobile WiMAX 1.0 standards to the new Mobile WiMAX 1.5 capabilities, so a move to LTE now aligns with
supporting WiMAX 1.5 in the future as well. Enhancements required to migrate to LTE in the radio and PHY
subsystem are as follows:

1. Replacing OFDMA with SC-FDMA in the Uplink (UL): the 3rd Generation Partnership Program
(3GPP) has chosen to use Single Carrier – Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) in the UL
in LTE. SC-FDMA has a significantly lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and allows for a
relatively high degree of commonality with the downlink OFDM scheme including reuse of the same
radio parameters.
2. Support for FDD in addition to TDD: the latest WiMAX standards allow for FDD although the
majority of existing equipment and approved interoperability profiles are only in TDD.
3. Support for 4x4 MIMO: representing another enhancement that aligns with the migration to WiMAX
1.5, current WiMAX solutions will need to add support for 4x4 MIMO to fully comply with LTE
specifications. This, however, is an upgrade that may be put on the roadmap since most initial
solutions and deployments will be 2x2 MIMO.
4. Increased flexibility in channel bandwidths and frequencies: LTE from the start is flexible enough
to support channel bandwidths from 1.25MHz up to 20MHz and for transmission in frequencies from
700MHz up.
5. Smaller frame size: with an eye on support for voice services, the LTE frame size is 1ms versus a
5ms frame size in WiMAX. The smaller frame size leads to a challenging timing requirement and the
need for real-time performance up into the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer.
6. Increased mobility: the LTE standards require support for mobility up to 500kmph, which is not a
requirement for WiMAX systems today.

Upper Layer Protocols

Despite the longer list of differences, the enhancement from WiMAX radio and PHY subsystems to LTE
equivalents is an incremental upgrade. The changes required are generally extensions of existing capabilities
in the WiMAX radio and PHY, and this is an area of deep expertise in WiMAX equipment providers’
organizations. However, as one moves up the stack into the higher layer protocols and the application, the
knowledge gap becomes larger and the sheer time required to transition becomes greater.

Figure 1 places the WiMAX RAN architecture side-by-side with the LTE equivalent.

WiMAX RAN LTE RAN

MME Serving GW
ASN GW

S1-MME S1-U
R6 R6
S1-U S1-MME

X2
R8
BS BS eNodeB eNodeB

R1 R1 LTE-Uu LTE-Uu

Figure 1: WiMAX and LTE RAN Architectures Compared

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The similarities include a flat end-to-end all-IP access network, radio resource management resident in the
base stations, and support for direct communication among base stations to coordinate handover and radio
aspects. However, when one looks a little deeper, the differences begin to emerge. Figure 2 places the
software architectures of WiMAX and LTE base stations side-by-side.

WiMAX BS LTE BS

WiMAX BS Application eNodeB Application

Connection Radio Measurement Dynamic Connection Radio eNB Measurement Dynamic
RB RB
RRM Mobility Adm ission Config & Resource RRM Mobility Admission C onfig & Resource
Control Control
Cont. Control Provision Allocation Cont. Control Provision Allocation

Stack Stack RRC

Manager 16 CNTL IPCS Manager X2AP S1AP
R8 ASN CNTL GRE
PDCP eGTP
RLC
MAC UDP SCTP
IPSec MAC IPSec
PHY IP PHY IP

Key
Layer 1 Layer 2 / Layer 3 Application

Figure 2: WiMAX and LTE Base Station Software Compared

As is highlighted in Figure 2, the software architectures begin to diverge significantly at the Layer 2 and Layer
3 protocols, both in the control and data planes. Critical differences are summarized in Table 2.

Interface WiMAX LTE Protocols LTE Key Differences

Protocols

BS to UE 16CNTL, MAC, RRC, PDCP, RLC, ƒ L2 more complex with segmentation /

PHY MAC, PHY desegmentation at RLC layer
ƒ MAC and MAC scheduler operate at 1ms
frame size
ƒ Security requires support for Snow3G at
PDCP layer
ƒ RRC and MAC must support FDD and
TDD profiles
ƒ Specific MAC channels for different
service types including multicast /
broadcast services
ƒ Completely different encode / decode
schemas and protocol information
elements
BS to BS R8, GRE, UDP, X2AP, SCTP, eGTP-u, ƒ Reliable transport over SCTP significantly
IPSec, IP IPSec, IP more complex than UDP
ƒ eGTP-u for tunneling the data from
eNodeB to eNodeB in LTE versus GRE in
WiMAX
ƒ Minimal control plane latency (X2) to
support higher speed mobility services
ƒ RRM related messages carried over X2
versus relayed in the ASN GW in WiMAX
ƒ Completely different encode / decode
schemas and protocol information
elements

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Interface WiMAX LTE Protocols LTE Key Differences

Protocols

BS to Core ASN CNTL, GRE, S1AP, SCTP, eGTP-u, ƒ Separate control and data plane paths
Network UDP, IPSec, IP IPSec, IP ƒ Reliable transport over SCTP significantly
more complex than UDP
ƒ eGTP-u in the data path versus GRE
ƒ Completely different encode / decode
schemas and protocol information
elements

From Table 2, it is clear that the gap widens as one looks further into the details of the upper layer functionality
in an LTE eNodeB versus a WiMAX BS. The best area of re-use for a WiMAX solution provider will come
within the MAC, and more importantly the MAC scheduler. Since both WiMAX and LTE utilize OFDMA in the
downlink, the MAC schedulers for downlink transmission may be leveraged from WiMAX to LTE.

Beyond the schedulers, however, LTE requires essentially a whole new set of protocols even into the transport
(i.e. SCTP vs. UDP) and the time to develop these from scratch would force the WiMAX base station provider
to miss the LTE window of opportunity to leverage their differentiating experience, tool sets (e.g., element
management systems, performance management systems, etc.), and existing economies of scale. All is not
lost, however, as there exists a burgeoning ecosystem of solution providers that support the entire suite of LTE
protocol stacks, helping speed time-to-market for LTE network equipment.

Conclusion

The time for WiMAX solution providers is now, for the LTE market is expanding quickly. Deployments are
starting and trials are broadly underway. It would be pennywise and pound foolish to waste energy trying to
argue the superiority of one technology solution over the other when there is such a phenomenal opportunity
for companies with key WiMAX assets to expand their addressable market to the over 4 billion GSM
subscribers worldwide. WiMAX solution providers have the OFDM experience and intellectual property to
compete and win large chunks of LTE infrastructure rollouts. By leveraging their existing radio and PHY
systems and working with the ecosystem of upper layer protocol software providers, a WiMAX equipment
vendor can rapidly get to market and compete for the next wave of LTE design wins.

About Continuous Computing

Continuous Computing® is the global source of integrated platform solutions that enable network equipment
providers to overcome the mobile broadband capacity challenge quickly and cost effectively. Leveraging more
than 20 years of telecom innovation, the company empowers customers to increase return on investment by
focusing internal resources on differentiation for 3G, Long Term Evolution (LTE), Femtocell and Deep Packet
Inspection (DPI) applications. Expertise and responsiveness set the company apart: only Continuous
Computing combines best-in-class ATCA platforms with world-famous Trillium® protocol software to create
highly-optimized, field-proven wireless and packet processing network infrastructure. www.ccpu.com

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Forum, Intel Embedded Alliance, Multicore Packet Processing Forum, NI Alliance, PICMG and the SCOPE
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