Fair Coexistence of Scheduled and Random Access Wireless Networks: Unlicensed LTE/WiFi

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the coexistence of scheduled LTE and random WiFi access, revealing inherent throughput and delay costs, and proposes a fair rate allocation considering heterogeneity and imperfect sensing.

Contribution

It derives the joint proportional fair rate allocation for scheduled and random access networks, providing insights into LTE/WiFi coexistence and heterogeneity costs.

Findings

Mixing scheduled and random access incurs throughput and delay costs.

Derived a joint proportional fair rate allocation model.

Experimental results highlight the impact of imperfect carrier sensing.

Abstract

We study the fair coexistence of scheduled and random access transmitters sharing the same frequency channel. Interest in coexistence is topical due to the need for emerging unlicensed LTE technologies to coexist fairly with WiFi. However, this interest is not confined to LTE/WiFi as coexistence is likely to become increasingly commonplace in IoT networks and beyond 5G. In this article we show that mixing scheduled and random access incurs and inherent throughput/delay cost, the cost of heterogeneity. We derive the joint proportional fair rate allocation, which casts useful light on current LTE/WiFi discussions. We present experimental results on inter-technology detection and consider the impact of imperfect carrier sensing.