Frame Based Equipment Medium Access in LTE-U: Mechanism Enhancements and DTMC Modeling
Geeth P. Wijesiri, Frank Yong Li · 2017
To address the challenge of ever-growing data rate demand and benefit from the popularity of WiFi capability in mobile phones, 3GPP is studying techniques which enable the coexistence of WiFi and LTE in the unlicensed band, known as LTEU. Two flavors of the listen before talk (LBT) principle, referred to as load based equipment (LBE) and frame based equipment (FBE), are recommended by 3GPP. In this paper, we investigate two enhanced FBE mechanisms, i.e., 1) enhanced FBE (E-FBE); and 2) backoff and idle time reduction FBE (BITR-FBE) for the purpose of improving FBE. After presenting the idea of E-FBE, we propose BITR-FBE which can further improve throughput, shorten delay and reduce energy consumption of LTE-U or WiFi devices. The performance of these both mechanisms is evaluated through Markov modeling and simulations with respect to throughput, delay, energy consumption as well as transmission opportunities under both homogeneous and heterogeneous network scenarios.