Analyzing the Coexistence of Wi-Fi and LAA-LTE Towards a Proportional Throughput Fairness

TLDR: This paper tries to ensure the fair coexistence between Wi-Fi and LTE by proportionally changing the maximum packet length for each network by applying an optimization and a heuristic approach and shows that a fair share of the medium can be achieved by changing the ratio of packet length.

Abstract: Utilizing the unlicensed spectrum for the Long Term Evolution (LTE), enables the service providers to significantly increase the capacity of the network. However, LTE has to coexist with other network technologies and especially Wi-Fi. LTE employs the Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) protocol and applies the Listen Before Talk (LBT) technique to efficiently share the communication channel with Wi-Fi. Nonetheless, there is still a big gap in throughput performance between the two technologies, with the LAA-LTE considerably outperforming Wi-Fi. This unfair behavior becomes more severe in a saturation mode scenario, where the two networks are fully loaded. In this paper, we try to ensure the fair coexistence between Wi-Fi and LTE by proportionally changing the maximum packet length for each network by applying an optimization and a heuristic approach. The ultimate goal is to equalize the overall throughput for Wi-Fi and LAA or equalize the individual throughput attained for each communicating device. An admission control scheme is also studied to allocate incoming users between the two networks, while trying to balance the throughput distribution. Our results show that by changing the ratio of packet length between Wi-Fi and LAA-LTE a fair share of the medium can be achieved.