Comparison of MAC protocols between WiMAX and LTE

WiMAX based on series of IEEE 802.16 standards and 3GPP LTE are the two important development directions of next generation broadband wireless communication. In physical layers, in order to transmit high speed data flow in limited bandwidth, they both use the OFDM technology and MIMO technology to enhance system capacity and frequency spectral efficiency, avoid inter symbol interference, and improve system performance. But, they have more different methods in design of MAC protocols and sublayer allocation of MAC functions. In this paper, we firstly introduce the MAC protocols in WiMAX 16e and 3GPP LTE Release 8. Then compare their MAC functions in control plane and data plane, and provide the comparison chart of MAC functions between WiMAX and LTE. It shows that they both provide the MAC basic functions though they have various differences in realization mechanism and function division.