A SURVEY OF LTE WI-FI COEXISTENCE IN UNLICENSED BANDS

Abstract

With the rapid growth of mobile data, many LTE operators are interested in leveraging unlicensed bands to enhance data rates and user experience. Th is paper investigates the problem of the coexistence of LTE and Wi-Fi in 5 GHz unlicensed bands. We fi rst introduce the current rules for the 5 GHz unlicensed bands and the carrier aggregation technique. We then discuss four deployment scenarios and two LTE-unlicensed (LTE-U) coexistence scenarios. Further, we provide a feature comparison between LTE and Wi-Fi in the PHY/MAC layers, and review the coexistence methods for LTE-U and Wi-Fi without or with the Listen- Before-Talk (LBT) mechanism. Th is paper is concluded by an examination of Wi-Fi link aggregation and in-device coexistence issues.