# Impact of LTE's Periodic Interference on Heterogeneous Wi-Fi Transmissions

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how LTE's periodic interference impacts Wi-Fi's random access protocol, revealing degradation in performance and fairness, and discusses modeling limitations.

## Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of LTE's structured interference effects on Wi-Fi's DCF behavior and performance.

## Key findings

- LTE's periodic transmissions reduce Wi-Fi channel utilization.
- Wi-Fi fairness is significantly affected by LTE interference.
- Persistent DCF models have limitations under periodic LTE interference.

## Abstract

The problem of Wi-Fi and LTE coexistence has been significantly debated in the last years, with the emergence of LTE extensions enabling the utilization of unlicensed spectrum for carrier aggregation. Rather than focusing on the problem of resource sharing between the two technologies, in this paper, we study the effects of LTE's structured transmissions on the Wi-Fi random access protocol. We show how the scheduling of periodic LTE transmissions modifies the behavior of 802.11's distributed coordination function (DCF), leading to a degradation of Wi-Fi performance, both in terms of channel utilization efficiency and in terms of channel access fairness. We also discuss the applicability and limitations of a persistent DCF model in analyzing Wi-Fi performance under periodic LTE interference.