Difference Between WiMAX and WiMAX 2

WiMAX and WiMAX 2 both are wireless broadband technologies to deliver high data rate and low latency. WiMAX is already implemented and WiMAX 2 is in development phase. WiMAX belongs to IEEE 802.16 family and 802.16d and 802.16e is already in place. WiMAX 2 is building upon 802.16m and which is backward compatible with WiMAX. The expectation of WiMAX 2 is to deliver more than 100 Mbps on a device when on mobility of 500 km/h.

WiMAX 2 (Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access, IEEE 802.16m)

WiMAX 2 is a successor of WiMAX and building upon IEEE 802.16m standard. WiMAX supposed to give more capabilities than 802.16 with backward compatibility with WiMAX Air Interface R 1.0 and R 1.5. WiMAX 2 expected to deliver more than 1000 Mbps with low or no mobility and more than 100 Mbps with mobility with low latency and increased VoIP capabilities.

It’s an ideal solution to provide high speed internet connections to rural areas and it’s a best option for backhauling the local offices or mobile stations. This is an end to end IP technology.

Typically it operates in 450 MHz to 3800 MHz.

WiMAX (IEEE 802.16)

WiMAX (802.16) (Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access) is a 4th Generation mobile access technology for high speed access. The current version of this technology can provide around 40 Mbps in reality and the updated version is expected to deliver 1Gbps in fixed endpoints.

WiMAX falls under IEEE 802.16 family and 802.16e (1×2 SIMO,64 QAM,FDD) gives 144 Mbps download and 138 Mbps upload. 802.16m is the expected version to be delivered around 1Gbps in fixed endpoints.

WiMAX has fixed version and mobile version. The fixed WiMAX version (802.16d and 802.16e) could be used for broadband solutions for home and can be used for backhauling remote offices or mobile stations. The WiMAX mobile version (802.16m) could be used as the replacement of GSM and CDMA technologies with expected high throughput is referred as WiMAX 2.

WiMAX down Link Data rates:

Air Interface R1.0

2×2 MIMO 10 MHz TDD – Around 37 Mbps

Air Interface R1.5
2×2 MIMO 10 MHz TDD – Around 40 Mbps
2×2 MIMO 20 MHz TDD – Around 83 Mbps
2×2 MIMO 2×20 MHz FDD – Around 144 Mbps

Air Interface R2
2×2 MIMO 2×20 MHz FDD – Around 160 Mbps
4×4 MIMO 2×20 MHz FDD – Around 300 Mbps

Difference Between WiMAX and WiMAX 2 (1) Basically both come from same family IEEE 802.16 (2) WiMAX can offer maximum around 300 Mbps with 4×4 MIMO whereas WiMAX 2 supposed to offer around 1000 Mbps with less mobility or no mobility. (3) Latency will be lower in WiMAX 2 than WiMAX, since WiMAX comes with more VoIP capabilities. (4) WiMAX is already launched and WiMAX 2 is expected to be launched later 2011 or early 2012