Difference Between Wi-Fi and Wi-Max

Parameter	Wi-Fi	Wi-Max
Acronym for	Wireless Fidelity	World Interoperability for Microwave Access
Description	It is a wireless technology that allows any electronic device to exchange and transfer data wirelessly.	It a wireless technology which delivers carrier class, high speed wireless broadband at low cost and covering large distance than Wi-Fi.
IEEE Standard	IEEE 802.11	IEEE 802.16
Implementation	It is basically an implementation of wireless Local Area Connection within a small building, a college, or an institutional building.	It is a wireless broadband metropolitan technology whose objective is to interconnect houses, buildings, or even hot spots to allow communication between them or with other networks.
Cost	Can be implemented by using low cost access pints.	Wi-Max technology requires costly infrastructure.
Frequency band	2.4 GHz to 5 GHz	Licensed/Unlicensed 2 GHz to 11 GHz
Channel Bandwidth	Wi-Fi 802.11b= 25 MHz Wi-Fi 802.11 a/g=20 MHz	Adjustable 1.25 M to 20 MHz
Full/Half Duplex	Half Duplex	Full Duplex
Radio Technology	Wi-Fi 802.11b= Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum Wi-Fi 802.11 a/g= OFDM (64-channels)	OFDM (256-channels)
Bandwidth Efficiency	Wi-Fi 802.11b= <=0.44 bps/Hz Wi-Fi 802.11 a/g= <=2.7 bps/Hz	<=5 bps/Hz
Modulation	BPSK, QPSK, 16-, 64- QAM	BPSK, QPSK, 16-, 64-, 256-QAM
Encryption	Optional- RC4 (AES in 802.11i)	Mandatory- 3DES Optional- AES
Mobility	In Development	Mobile Wi-MAX (802.16e)
Mesh	Vendor Proprietary	Yes
Access Protocol	CSMA/CA	Request/Grant
Coverage	< 100 feet indoor <1000 feet Outdoor	Fixed Wi-Max=3-5 Miles Mobile Wi-Max=<2 Miles
Multiplexing	CSMA	TDD,FDD

Terms Used:
IEEE: Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
ISM: Industrial, Scientific and Medical
U-NII: Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure
OFDM: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
CSMA/CA: Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance
BPSK: Binary Phase Shift Keying
QPSK: Quadrature Phase Shift Keying
RC4: Rivest Cipher 4(Software Steam Cipher)
3DES:Triple Data Encryption Algorithm
AES: Advance Encryption Standard
TDD: Time Division Duplex
FDD: Frequency Division Duplex
QAM: Quadrature Amplitude Modulation
Alternate Titles
Difference between Wifi and Wimax
Difference between Wi-Fi and Wi-Max
Wi-Fi vs Wi-Max
Comapare Wi-Fi with Wi-Max