With the increase of wireless communication demands, licensed spectrum for long term evolution (LTE) is no longer enough. The research effort has focused on implementing LTE to unlicensed frequency bands in recent years, which unavoidably brings the problem of LTE co-existence with other existing systems on the same band. This paper proposes an adaptive co-existence mechanism for LTE and wireless local area networks (WLAN) to enable a significant system performance of WLAN while LTE does not lose much as well. LTE realizes the co-existence by allocating time resources dynamically according to the traffic load of WLAN system.
Exploiting the unlicensed spectrum is considered by 3GPP as one promising solution to meet the ever-increasing traffic growth. As a result, one major enhancement for LTE in Release 13 has been to enable its operation in the unlicensed spectrum via Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA). In this article, we provide an overview of the Release 13 LAA technology including motivation, use cases, LTE enhancements for enabling the unlicensed band operation, and the coexistence evaluation results contributed by 3GPP participants.
The commercial success of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) and the resulting growth in mobile data demand have urged cellular network operators to strive for new innovations. LTE in unlicensed spectrum has been proposed to allow cellular network operators to offload some of their data traffic by accessing the unlicensed 5 GHz frequency band. Currently, there are three proposed variants for LTE operation in the unlicensed band, namely LTE-U, Licensed Spectrum Access (LAA), and MulteFire. This paper provides a comparative analysis of these variants and explains the current regulations of the 5 GHz …
Proponents of deploying LTE in the 5 GHz band for providing additional cellular network capacity have claimed that LTE would be a better neighbour to Wi-Fi in the unlicensed band, than Wi-Fi is to itself. On the other side of the debate, the Wi-Fi community has objected that LTE would be highly detrimental to Wi-Fi network performance. However, there is a lack of transparent and systematic engineering evidence supporting the contradicting claims of the two camps, which is essential for ascertaining whether regulatory intervention is in fact required to protect the Wi-Fi incumbent from the new …
Due to the dramatic growth in mobile data traffic on one hand and the scarcity of the licensed spectrum on the other hand, mobile operators are considering the use of unlicensed bands (especially those in 5 GHz) as complementary spectrum for providing higher system capacity and better user experience. This approach is currently being standardized by 3GPP under the name of LTE Licensed-Assisted Access (LTE-LAA). In this paper, we take a holistic approach for LTE-LAA small cell traffic balancing by jointly optimizing the use of the licensed and unlicensed bands. We pose this traffic balancing as…
Long Term Evolution (LTE) is expanding its utilization in unlicensed band by deploying LTE Unlicensed (LTEU) and Licensed Assisted Access LTE (LTE-LAA) technology. Smart Grid can take the advantages of unlicensed bands for achieving two-way communication between smart meters and utility data centers by using LTE-U/LTE-LAA. However, both schemes must co-exist with the incumbent Wi-Fi system. In this paper, several co-existence schemes of Wi-Fi and LTE technology is comprehensively reviewed. The challenges of deploying LTE and Wi-Fi in the same band are clearly addressed based on the papers revi…
Ensuring fair co-existence between unlicensed LTE and WiFi networks is currently of major concern to both cellular operators and WiFi providers. Two main unlicensed LTE approaches currently being discussed, namely Carrier Sense Adaptive Transmission (CSAT) and Listen Before Talk (LBT). While these mechanisms differ in their compatibility with existing LTE specifications and regulatory compliance in different countries, they also use fundamentally different approaches to access the channel. Nevertheless, we show in this article that when optimally configured both approaches are capable of provi…
In this paper we consider the problem of adaptive video streaming over an LTE-A network that utilizes Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) which is an instance of LTE Unlicensed. With LTE Unlicensed users of the LTE-A network opportunisti- cally access radio resources from unlicensed and licensed carriers through Carrier Aggregation (CA). Our objective is to select the highest possible video quality for each LTE-A user while also try to deliver video data in time for playback, and thus avoid buffer under-run events that deteriorate viewing experience. However, the unpredictable nature of the wireles…
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 LT…
Recently, there has been significant interest in the integration and co-existence of Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) with other Radio Access Technologies, like IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). Although, the inter-working of IEEE 802.11 WLANs with 3GPP LTE has indicated enhanced network performance in the context of capacity and load balancing, the WLAN discovery scheme implemented in most of the commercially available smartphones is very inefficient and results in high battery drainage. In this paper, we have proposed an energy efficient W…
Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Path Aggregation (LWPA) based on Multi-path Transmission Control Protocol (MPTCP) has been under standardization procedure as a promising and cost-efficient solution to boost Downlink (DL) data rate and handle the rapidly increasing data traffic. This paper aims at providing tractable analysis for the DL performance evaluation of large-scale LWPA networks with the help of tools from stochastic geometry. We consider a simple yet practical model to determine under which conditions a native WLAN Access Point (AP) will work under LWPA mo…
Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) access points (APs) using 60 GHz unlicensed frequency band are considered as key enablers for future Gbps wireless local area networks (WLANs). Exhaustive search analog beamforming (BF) is mainly used with WiGig transmissions to overcome channel propagation loss and accomplish high rate data transmissions. Due to its short range transmission with high susceptibility to path blocking, a multiple number of WiGig APs should be installed to fully cover a typical target environment. Therefore, coordination among the installed APs is highly needed for enabling WiGig concurre…
We consider the problem of fair coexistence between LTE and Wi-Fi systems in the unlicensed 5 GHz U-NII bands. We focus on the misbehavior opportunities due to the heterogeneity in channel access mechanism and the lack of a common control plane. We define selfish misbehavior strategies for the LTE that yield an unfair share of the spectrum resources. Such strategies are based on manipulating the operational parameters of the LTE-LAA standard, namely the backoff mechanism, the traffic class parameters, the clear channel access (CCA) threshold, and others. Prior methods for detecting misbehavior…
Developing low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) solutions that are efficient to adopt, deploy and maintain are vital for smart cities. The poor quality-of-service of unlicensed LPWAN, and the high service cost of LTE-M/NB-IoT are key disadvantages of these technologies. Concatenating unlicensed with licensed LPWANs can overcome these limitations and harness their benefits. However, a concatenated LPWAN architecture will inevitably result in excess latency which may impact users' quality-of-experience (QoE). To evaluate the real-life feasibility of this system, we first propose a concatenated LP…
This paper elaborates on the design challenges, opportunities, and solutions for New Radio-based access to Unlicensed spectrum (NR-U) by taking into account the beam-based transmissions and the worldwide regulatory requirements. NR-U intends to expand the applicability of 5th generation New Radio access technology to support operation in unlicensed bands by adhering to Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) requirements for accessing the channel. LBT was already adopted by different variants of 4th generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) in unlicensed spectrum, i.e., Licensed-Assisted Access and MulteFire, to …
Coexistence with Wi-Fi is the key issue for unlicensed band LTE. The main coexistence mechanism is Listen-Before-Talk, whereby radio frequency energy is sensed over a short period of time and compared to a threshold. Given the default energy thresholds, the energy sensing range is actually much less than the cell range. Both technologies can experience collisions due to transmission being below energy detection threshold. Currently Wi-Fi is agnostic of LTE presence in the unlicensed spectrum. To improve coexistence a communications channel via relaying is proposed to be used by the unlicensed …
With the exponential growth in mobile data traffic taking place currently and projected into the future, mobile operators need cost effective ways to manage the load of their networks. Traditionally, this has been achieved by offloading mobile traffic onto Wi-Fi networks due to their low cost and ubiquitous deployment. Recently, LTE operating in the unlicensed spectrum has drawn significant interests from mobile operators due to the availability of the unlicensed spectrum. However, the deployment of LTE networks in the unlicensed band poses significant challenges to the performance of current …
The next generation wireless standard, called Fifth Generation (5G), is being designed to encompass Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) architectures consisting of a single holistic network with Multiple Radio Access Technologies (Multi-RAT). Multiple connectivity protocols and spectrum would be managed from a common core (management system) handling both: i) traditional macro cellular systems (such as LTE), that can provide long-range, outdoor coverage, as well as ii) low-power wireless systems with high capacity (such as Wi-Fi), that can be deployed to cater indoor traffic needs. 5G HetNets are…
Spectrum sharing mechanisms need to be carefully designed to enable inter-technology coexistence in the unlicensed bands, as these bands are an instance of a spectrum commons where heterogeneous technologies and deployments must coexist. Unlike in licensed bands, where multiple technologies could coexist only in a primary-secondary DSA mode, a spectrum commons offers competition opportunities between multiple dominant technologies, such as Wi-Fi and the recently proposed LTE in the 5 GHz unlicensed band. In this paper we systematically study the performance of different spectrum sharing scheme…
Bandit Convex Optimisation (BCO) is a powerful framework for sequential decision-making in non-stationary and partially observable environments. In a BCO problem, a decision-maker sequentially picks actions to minimize the cumulative cost associated with these decisions, all while receiving partial feedback about the state of the environment. This formulation is a very natural fit for wireless-network optimisation problems and has great application potential since: i) instead of assuming full observability of the network state, it only requires the metric to optimise as input, and ii) it provi…
LTE in the unlicensed band (LTE-U) is a promising solution to overcome the scarcity of the wireless spectrum. However, to reap the benefits of LTE-U, it is essential to maintain its effective coexistence with WiFi systems. Such a coexistence, hence, constitutes a major challenge for LTE-U deployment. In this paper, the problem of unlicensed spectrum sharing among WiFi and LTE-U system is studied. In particular, a fair time sharing model based on \emph{ruin theory} is proposed to share redundant spectral resources from the unlicensed band with LTE-U without jeopardizing the performance of the W…
Millimeter wave (mmW) communications at the 60 GHz unlicensed band is seen as a promising approach for boosting the capacity of wireless local area networks (WLANs). If properly integrated into legacy IEEE 802.11 standards, mmW communications can offer substantial gains by offloading traffic from congested sub-6 GHz unlicensed bands to the 60 GHz mmW frequency band. In this paper, a novel medium access control (MAC) is proposed to dynamically manage the WLAN traffic over the unlicensed mmW and sub-6 GHz bands. The proposed protocol leverages the capability of advanced multi-band wireless stati…
Radio communications using the unlicensed Sub-GHz bands are expected to play an important role in the deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT). The regulations of the sub-GHz unlicensed bands can affect the deployment of LPWAN networks in a similar way to how they affected the deployment of WLAN networks at the end of the twenty's century. This paper reviews the current regulations and labeling requirements affecting LPWAN-based IoT devices for the most relevant markets worldwide (US, Europe, China, Japan, India, Brazil and Canada) and identify the main roadblocks for massive adaption of the…
Device-to-Device (D2D) communication, which enables direct communication between nearby mobile devices, is an attractive add-on component to improve spectrum efficiency and user experience by reusing licensed cellular spectrum in 5G system. In this paper, we propose to enable D2D communication in unlicensed spectrum (D2D-U) as an underlay of the uplink LTE network for further booming the network capacity. A sensing-based protocol is designed to support the unlicensed channel access for both LTE and D2D users. We further investigate the subchannel allocation problem to maximize the sum rate of …
Osaka University（大阪大学）；The University of Chicago（芝加哥大学）；Indian Institute of Technology Delhi（印度理工学院德里分校）
Unlicensed LTE-WiFi coexistence networks are undergoing consistent densification to meet the rising mobile data demands. With the increase in coexistence network complexity, it is important to study network feature relationships (NFRs) and utilize them to optimize dense coexistence network performance. This work studies NFRs in unlicensed LTE-WiFi (LTE-U and LTE-LAA) networks through supervised learning of network data collected from real-world experiments. Different 802.11 standards and varying channel bandwidths are considered in the experiments and the learning model selection policy is pre…
Millimeter-wave (mmw) frequency bands, especially 60 GHz unlicensed band, are considered as a promising solution for gigabit short range wireless communication systems. IEEE standard 802.11ad, also known as WiGig, is standardized for the usage of the 60 GHz unlicensed band for wireless local area networks (WLANs). By using this mmw WLAN, multi-Gbps rate can be achieved to support bandwidth-intensive multimedia applications. Exhaustive search along with beamforming (BF) is usually used to overcome 60 GHz channel propagation loss and accomplish data transmissions in such mmw WLANs. Because of it…
Traffic load balancing and resource allocation is set to play a crucial role in leveraging the dense and increasingly heterogeneous deployment of multi-radio wireless networks. Traffic aggregation across different access points (APs)/radio access technologies (RATs) has become an important feature of recently introduced cellular standards on LTE dual connectivity and LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA). Low complexity traffic splitting solutions for scenarios where the APs are not necessarily collocated are of great interest for operators. In this paper, we consider a scenario, where traffic for each u…
The use of unlicensed spectrum for future LTE systems raises concerns about its impact on co-located Wi-Fi networks. We report herein on extensions to a popular network simulator, known as ns-3, to model such coexistence. To our knowledge, this simulator is novel in two important ways. First, it is presently the only freely available simulator for coexistence studies, and as open source software, it offers new opportunities for reproducible research and collaborative model development. Second, we are not aware of other simulators with similar wireless models that allow full system studies to b…
To meet the high demand for mobile data, the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) established a set of standards known as 5G New Radio (5G NR). The architecture of 5G NR includes a flexible radio access network and a core network. 3GPP has also been working on a new radio access technology, called 5G NR Unlicensed (5G NR-U), which aims at extending 5G NR to unlicensed bands. In this paper, we give an overview of the most recent 5G NR-U design elements and discuss potential concerns, including fair coexistence with other unlicensed technologies such as Wi-Fi. We use simulations to study …
Next generation networks are envisioned to have ubiquitous availability and seamless access as main goals. In general, coexistence of multiple access technologies is one of the most promising way to achieve these goals, particularly using WiFi and LTE (Long Term Evolution) simultaneously which are two major players in future Internet. LTE is primarily used in a licensed spectrum but an unlicensed version is also in use by research communities. In this work we study LTE-U (LTE-Unlicensed) and WiFi Coexistence in a handheld device by analyzing existing scheduling mechanisms and proposing a novel…
Future mobile networks will exploit unlicensed spectrum to boost capacity and meet growing user demands cost-effectively. The 3GPP has recently defined a Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) scheme to enable global Unlicensed LTE (U-LTE) deployment, aiming at ($i$) ensuring fair coexistence with incumbent WiFi networks, i.e., impacting on their performance no more than another WiFi device, and ($ii$) achieving superior airtime efficiency as compared to WiFi. In this paper we show the standardized LAA fails to simultaneously fulfill these objectives, and design an alternative orthogonal (collision-fr…
Network operators are looking towards LTE License Assisted Access (LAA) as a means of extending capacity by offloading traffic to unlicensed bands. However, operation in these bands requires abiding to certain coexistence rules in terms of channel access. The description of these rules in existing literature is not always in line with the latest standards. Therefore, in this paper, we clarify the operation of LAA, focusing on channel access and methods of providing Quality of Service (QoS) support. In terms of coexistence, we evaluate the impact of LAA under its various QoS settings on Wi-Fi p…
The unlicensed spectrum is recently considered one of the defining solutions to meet the steadily growing traffic demand. This, in turn, has led to the enhancement for LTE in Release-13 to enable Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA) operations. The design of the medium access control (MAC) protocol for the LAA system to harmonically coexist with the incumbent WLAN system operating in an unlicensed band is critical and challenging. In this paper, we consider an Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) system coexisting with a Wi-Fi network operating at millimeter-wave (mmWave) unlicensed spectrum, for wh…
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) recently started standardizing the "Licensed-Assisted Access using LTE" for small cells, referred to as Dual Band Femtocell (DBF) in this paper, which uses LTE air interface in both licensed and unlicensed bands based on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) carrier aggregation feature. Alternatively, the Small Cell Forum introduced the Integrated Femto-WiFi (IFW) small cell which simultaneously accesses both the licensed band (via cellular interface) and the unlicensed band (via WiFi interface). In this paper, a practical algorithm for IFW and DBF to auto…
This paper studies how to maximize the per-user-based throughput in an M-tier heterogeneous wireless network (HetNet) by optimally managing traffic flows between the access points (APs) in the HetNet. The APs in the first M-1 tiers can use the licensed spectrum at the same time whereas they share the unlicensed spectrum with the APs in the Mth tier by the proposed opportunistic carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol. The APs that access the licensed and unlicensed spectra simultaneously are able to integrate their spectrum resources by the carrier aggregation…
License Assisted Access (LAA) LTE (LTE-LAA) is a new type of LTE that aggregates the licensed LTE bands with the unlicensed bands via carrier aggregation. To operate in unlicensed bands, LTE-LAA adopts the listen-before-talk policy and designs its channel access mechanism similar to WLAN's DCF. In this paper, we consider an LAA network consisting of an LTE-LAA eNB coexisting with a Wi-Fi STA, and capture the {\em asymmetric hidden terminal problem} where the eNB recognizes the STA while the opposite is not true, which is caused by the asymmetric CCA thresholds between them. We model the networ…
Interference evaluation is crucial when deciding whether and how wireless technologies should operate. In this paper we demonstrate the benefit of risk-informed interference assessment to aid spectrum regulators in making decisions, and to readily convey engineering insight. Our contributions are: we apply, for the first time, risk assessment to a problem of inter-technology spectrum sharing, i.e. Wi-Fi/LTE in the 5 GHz unlicensed band, and we demonstrate that this method comprehensively quantifies the interference impact. We perform simulations with our newly publicly-available tool and we co…
With the exponential increase in mobile users, the mobile data demand has grown tremendously. To meet these demands, cellular operators are constantly innovating to enhance the capacity of cellular systems. Consequently, operators have been reusing the licensed spectrum spatially, by deploying 4G/LTE small cells (e.g., Femto Cells) in the past. However, despite the use of small cells, licensed spectrum will be unable to meet the consistently rising data traffic because of data-intensive applications such as augmented reality or virtual reality (AR/VR) and on-the-go high-definition video stream…
In this paper, we present a spectrum monitoring framework for the detection of radar signals in spectrum sharing scenarios. The core of our framework is a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model that enables Measurement Capable Devices to identify the presence of radar signals in the radio spectrum, even when these signals are overlapped with other sources of interference, such as commercial LTE and WLAN. We collected a large dataset of RF measurements, which include the transmissions of multiple radar pulse waveforms, downlink LTE, WLAN, and thermal noise. We propose a pre-processing da…
Coexistence of Wi-Fi and LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U) in shared or unlicensed bands has drawn growing attention from both academia and industry. An important consideration is fairness between Wi-Fi and duty cycled LTE-U, which is often defined in terms of channel access time, as adopted by the LTE-U Forum. Despite many studies on duty cycle adaptation design for fair sharing, one crucial fact has often been neglected: LTE-U systems unilaterally control LTE-U duty cycles; hence, as self- interested users, they have incentives to misbehave, e.g., transmitting with a larger duty cycle that exceeds a gi…
To boost the capacity of the cellular system, the operators have started to reuse the same licensed spectrum by deploying 4G LTE small cells (Femto Cells) in the past. But in time, these small cell licensed spectrum is not sufficient to satisfy future applications like augmented reality (AR)and virtual reality (VR). Hence, cellular operators look for alternate unlicensed spectrum in Wi-Fi 5 GHz band, later 3GPP named as LTE Licensed Assisted Access (LAA). The recent and current rollout of LAA deployments (in developed nations like the US) provides an opportunity to understand coexistence profo…
This paper investigates the co-existence of Wi-Fi and LTE in emerging unlicensed frequency bands which are intended to accommodate multiple radio access technologies. Wi-Fi and LTE are the two most prominent access technologies being deployed today, motivating further study of the inter-system interference arising in such shared spectrum scenarios as well as possible techniques for enabling improved co-existence. An analytical model for evaluating the baseline performance of co-existing Wi-Fi and LTE is developed and used to obtain baseline performance measures. The results show that both Wi-F…
Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) has been adopted as the spectrum sharing technique that guarantees a fair LTE/Wi-Fi coexistence in the unlicensed spectrum at the 5 GHz band. Differently, at mmWave bands, where beamforming is a must to overcome propagation limits, LBT scope becomes limited because the interference layout changes due to the directionality of transmissions. In this regard, this paper proposes a Listen-Before-Receive (LBR) technique for shared spectrum access and analyzes its potentials to promote a fair coexistence of multiple Radio Access Technologies (RATs) in unlicensed mmWave bands,…
Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) access points (APs) using 60 GHz unlicensed frequency band are considered as key enablers for future Gbps WLANs. Due to its short range transmission with high susceptibility to path blocking, a multiple number of WiGig APs should be installed to fully cover a typical target environment. However, using autonomously operated WiGig APs with IEEE 802.11ad DCF, the exhaustive search analog beamforming and the maximum received power based autonomous users association prevent the establishment of optimal WiGig concurrent links that maximize the total system throughput in rand…
The application of Machine Learning (ML) techniques to complex engineering problems has proved to be an attractive and efficient solution. ML has been successfully applied to several practical tasks like image recognition, automating industrial operations, etc. The promise of ML techniques in solving non-linear problems influenced this work which aims to apply known ML techniques and develop new ones for wireless spectrum sharing between Wi-Fi and LTE in the unlicensed spectrum. In this work, we focus on the LTE-Unlicensed (LTE-U) specification developed by the LTE-U Forum, which uses the duty…
A Multiarmed Bandit Approach for LTE-U/Wi-Fi Coexistence in a Multicell Scenario
Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte（北里奥格兰德联邦大学）；EFREI Paris（巴黎EFREI高等学院）；Vyaire Medical Inc.（Vyaire医疗公司）；Instituto de Pesquisas Eldorado（Eldorado研究所）；Bosch（博世）
The application of LTE technology has evolved from infrastructure-based deployments in licensed bands to new use cases covering ad hoc, device-to-device communications and unlicensed band operation. Vehicular communication is an emerging field of particular interest for LTE, covering in our understanding both automotive (cars) as well as unmanned aerial vehicles. Existing commercial equipment is designed for infrastructure making it unsuitable for vehicular applications requiring low weight and unlicensed band support (e.g. 5.9 GHz ITS-band). In this work, we present tinyLTE, a system design w…
To avoid the foreseeable spectrum crunch, LTE operators have started to explore the option to directly use 5 GHz unlicensed spectrum band being used by IEEE 802.11 (WiFi). However, as LTE is not designed with shared spectrum access in mind, there is a major issue of coexistence with WiFi networks. Current coexistence schemes to be deployed at the LTE-U BS create coexistence gaps only in one domain (e.g., time, frequency, or space) and can provide only incremental gains due to the lack of coordination among the coexisting WiFi and LTE-U networks. Therefore, we propose a coordinated coexistence …
Despite exhibiting very high theoretical data rates, in practice, the performance of LTE-U/LAA and WiFi networks is severely limited under cross-technology coexistence scenarios in the unlicensed 5GHz band. As a remedy, recent research shows the need for collaboration and coordination among co-located networks. However, enabling such collaboration requires an information exchange that is hard to realize due to completely incompatible network protocol stacks. We propose OfdmFi, the first cross-technology communication scheme that enables direct bidirectional over-the-air communication between L…
A significant barrier in providing affordable rural broadband is to connect the rural and remote places to the optical Point of Presence (PoP) over distances of few kilometers. A lot of work has been done in the area of long distance Wi-Fi networks. However, these networks require tall towers and high gain (directional) antennas. Also, they work in the unlicensed band which has Effective Isotropically Radiated Power (EIRP) limit (e.g. 1 W in India) which restricts the network design. In this work, we propose a Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) network operating in TV UHF to connect the remo…
This article studies an essential yet challenging problem in 5G wireless networks: \emph{Is it possible to enable spectrally-efficient spectrum sharing for heterogeneous wireless networks with different, possibly incompatible, spectrum access technologies on the same spectrum bands; without modifying the protocol stacks of existing wireless networks?} To answer this question, this article explores the system challenges that need to be addressed to enable a new spectrum sharing paradigm based on beamforming, which we refer to as {\em CoBeam}. In CoBeam, a secondary wireless network is allowed t…
Coexistence between cellular systems and Wi-Fi gained the attention of the research community when LTE License Assisted Access (LAA) entered the unlicensed band. The recent introduction of NR-U as part of 5G introduces new coexistence opportunities because it implements scalable numerology (flexible subcarrier spacing and OFDM symbol lengths), and non-slot based scheduling (mini-slots), which considerably impact channel access. This paper analyzes the impact of NR-U settings on its coexistence with Wi-Fi networks and compares it with LAA operation using simulations and experiments. First, we p…
Today's radio access networks (RANs) are monolithic entities which often operate statically on a given set of parameters for the entirety of their operations. To implement realistic and effective spectrum sharing policies, RANs will need to seamlessly and intelligently change their operational parameters. In stark contrast with existing paradigms, the new O-RAN architectures for 5G-and-beyond networks (NextG) separate the logic that controls the RAN from its hardware substrate, allowing unprecedented real-time fine-grained control of RAN components. In this context, we propose the Channel-Awar…
Virginia Tech（弗吉尼亚理工大学）；George Mason University（乔治梅森大学）；Virginia Tech National Security Institute（弗吉尼亚理工大学国家安全研究所）
In light of the finite nature of the wireless spectrum and the increasing demand for spectrum use arising from recent technological breakthroughs in wireless communication, the problem of interference continues to persist. Despite recent advancements in resolving interference issues, interference still presents a difficult challenge to effective usage of the spectrum. This is partly due to the rise in the use of license-free and managed shared bands for Wi-Fi, long term evolution (LTE) unlicensed (LTE-U), LTE licensed assisted access (LAA), 5G NR, and other opportunistic spectrum access soluti…
As several new spectrum bands are opening up for shared use, a new paradigm of \textit{Diverse Band-aware Dynamic Spectrum Access} (d-DSA) has emerged. d-DSA equips a secondary device with software defined radios (SDRs) and utilize whitespaces (or idle channels) in \textit{multiple bands}, including but not limited to TV, LTE, Citizen Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), unlicensed ISM. In this paper, we propose a decentralized, online multi-agent reinforcement learning based cross-layer BAnd selection and Routing Design (BARD) for such d-DSA networks. BARD not only harnesses whitespaces in multipl…
The relentless development of the Internet of Things (IoT) communication technologies and the gradual maturity of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have led to a powerful cognitive computing ability. Users can now access efficient and convenient smart services in smart-city, green-IoT and heterogeneous networks. AI has been applied in various areas, including the intelligent household, advanced health-care, automatic driving and emotional interactions. This paper focuses on current wireless-communication technologies, including cellular-communication technologies (4G, 5G), low-power wide-area (LPWA…
