LTE-Unlicensed and WiFi: Sharing Unlicensed Spectrum in 5GHz Band
Muhammad Muneeb Bin Tariq, Khawaja Faizan, Mudassar Ali, Farhan Qamar · 2019
Long Term Evolution Unlicensed (LTE-U) is an emerging technology, which can handle the exponential increase in data traffic for future 5G wireless networks. By aggregating licensed and unlicensed carriers, LTE-U can achieve higher data rates and give good quality of services (QoS) to the users. However the issue of coexistence of LTE-U and WiFi in unlicensed band (5GHz) needs to be addressed, before we can reap the benefits of LTE-U technology to the fullest. In this paper, we dig the coexistence problem in detail along with the deployment scenarios and medium access control (MAC) protocols for LTE-U and WiFi. A detailed comparison of coexistence schemes with their drawbacks and advantages are outlined. We suggest a clear channel assessment (CCA) mechanism for coexistence of LTE-U and WiFi in 5GHz band. The suggested mechanism is validated by extensive simulations using Network Simulator (NS-3). Performance of the LTE-U-WiFi network is tracked using key performance indicators (KPIS), like throughput and latency.