How is LTE building penetration compared to WiMax?

[Darth Mo]

As owner of the Evo 3D and formerly the Evo 4G, I have to say the WiMax building penetration is terrible. I'm in an area that supposedly has "good building penetration," but 4G rarely connects indoors. The place it's most consistent is my second floor apartment which does me no good as of course I just use WiFi.

Is the building penetration for LTE any better? I know a lot of it has to do with frequencies but I'm wondering if it LTE will allow more indoor use.

I suppose in the end it's not a big deal if it doesn't work any better as 3G is fast enough for most browsing and so many places have WiFi. But it would nice to have 4G access on the commuter train and whatnot where WiMax is either super flaky or doesn't connect at all.

 

[Auzo]

Building penetration is really independent of the mobile comm standard used when comparing WiMax and LTE. Both are OFDMA based technologies (downlink at least) so they act pretty much the same in terms of building penetration.

As you alluded to the more important aspect is the frequency being used. Signal attenuation is proportional to the square of the frequency, e.g. if i double the frequency used it actually quadruples the loss of the signal and that's just free space loss. when you account for differences in building penetration on top of that, the loss goes up even more.

Bottom line yes you will see improved in building reception but that's mainly because of the lower frequency Sprint is using for their LTE network.

 

[irev210]

Building penetration is really independent of the mobile comm standard used when comparing WiMax and LTE. Both are OFDMA based technologies (downlink at least) so they act pretty much the same in terms of building penetration.

As you alluded to the more important aspect is the frequency being used. Signal attenuation is proportional to the square of the frequency, e.g. if i double the frequency used it actually quadruples the loss of the signal and that's just free space loss. when you account for differences in building penetration on top of that, the loss goes up even more.

Bottom line yes you will see improved in building reception but that's mainly because of the lower frequency Sprint is using for their LTE network.

Yes, except WiMAX cuts out around -85dB whereas LTE can hold a connection with a far weaker signal (beyond -110dB).

You can visit S4GRU.com for more info. I always thought the same thing you did.

 

[brownhornet]

My neighbor has a Nexus, difference really isn't that much. Where as with wimax it would die altogether when going inside the LTE will get 1 bar in certain parts of the house.

 

[DougB541#CB]

First frequency LTE is rolling out on is 1900Mhz which is the same as Sprint 3G.

They will have roaming agreements with Clear's LTE at 2.5Ghz which is the same as Wimax (and why building penetration was weak).

And they are replacing the iDEN 800Mhz network with LTE which should be the best frequency to be on in terms of penetration.

Of course, I don't think the Evo 4G LTE has a 800Mhz antenna so we may not benefit from this, but its not expected to be full rolled out for another 2 years anyway.

 

[DC Wuff]

Why would they not put an 800MHz antenna in the EVO 4G LTE, when they did put one in the EVO3D?

 

[Auzo]

Yes, except WiMAX cuts out around -85dB whereas LTE can hold a connection with a far weaker signal (beyond -110dB).

You can visit S4GRU.com for more info. I always thought the same thing you did.

I'm not quite sure you are comparing apples to apples here.

dB is unitless so giving two values doesn't tell you much. One terminology for an absolute power would be dBm (where 0 dBm is referenced to 1 mW). Assuming you meant to add the "m" at the end of dB, it still doesn't make sense because you are saying that LTE is able to "connect" at more than 25 dB lower power levels (dB works here since its a ratio of two powers). That means that LTE can connect at a power level that is > 316 times lower than that of Wimax.That doesn't seem reasonable for such similar technologies.

Do you have a link to that claim from S4GRU.com?