Performance of License Assisted Access Solutions Using ns-3

Abstract

3GPP has been working in establishing a new network infrastructure based on unlicensed spectrum known as LTE Secondary Cell (SCell) in a carrier aggregation scenario in which LTE user terminals would still be anchored to an LTE Primary Cell (PCell) over licensed spectrum. On this scenario, best-effort content would be delivered on the unlicensed band SCell, while QoS traffic and control signaling would still be a PCell responsibility. This work makes a performance analysis of 3GPP's solution, named LTE License Assisted Access (LTE-LAA), which allows the LTE system to operate on unlicensed spectrum, likewise comparing with other alternative coexistence solution called LTE duty cycle (LTE-DC) and making a Wi-Fi performance evaluation with those different coexistence solutions when operating in 5GHz band.

Multi-Cell LTE-U/Wi-Fi Coexistence Evaluation Using a Reinforcement Learning Framework

“…We can find several works dealing with the coexistence of the new unlicensed LTE technologies and the consolidated Wi-Fi [11][12][13][14]. One common finding of these works is that the LTE solutions are, for the evaluated scenarios, a better neighbor for Wi-Fi than Wi-Fi itself in terms of interference and capacity.…”

“…Thus, the mismatch between parameters can lead one technology to overlap others concerning access to the communication channel [16]. Even with this concern, LTE-LAA, with the carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA-CA) mechanism, can achieve a performance equal to or better than Wi-Fi coexisting with Wi-Fi [12]. With LTE-U, channel access alternatives based on channel sensing and dynamic adaptation of the duty cycle fractional work cycle have been proposed [17,18].…”

GTDM-CSAT: an LTE-U self Coexistence Solution based on Game Theory and Reinforcement Learning

“…Performance evaluation for LTE-LAA/Wi-Fi coexistence in dense deployment scenarios is presented in [24]- [28]. The results for low/moderate traffic loads evidence that LTE-LAA is a better neighbor for Wi-Fi even when compared to the scenario with two coexisting Wi-Fi systems.…”

“…In one hand, Wi-Fi experiences meaningful performance degradation when coexists with LTE-LAA in dense deployment and heavy traffic load scenarios. However, comparing the coexistence of identical technology in [28], the LTE-LAA/LTE-LAA combination is more robust to interference than Wi-Fi/Wi-Fi one.…”

“…Most of recent research related to LTE-U/Wi-Fi coexistence [8]- [11] is based on Wi-Fi Alliance's draft on test procedures for Wi-Fi/LTE-U coexistence [12]. These works provide different means for controlling the ON-OFF ratio time of the duty-cycle of LTE-U, aiming to evaluate the achieved LTE-U/Wi-Fi combined throughput.…”