Survey of Spectrum Sharing for Inter-Technology Coexistence

Increasing capacity demands in emerging wireless technologies are expected to be met by network densification and spectrum bands open to multiple technologies. These will, in turn, increase the level of interference and also result in more complex inter-technology interactions, which will need to be managed through spectrum sharing mechanisms. Consequently, novel spectrum sharing mechanisms should be designed to allow spectrum access for multiple technologies, while efficiently utilizing the spectrum resources overall. Importantly, it is not trivial to design such efficient mechanisms, not only due to technical aspects, but also due to regulatory and business model constraints. In this survey we address spectrum sharing mechanisms for wireless inter-technology coexistence by means of a technology circle that incorporates in a unified, system-level view the technical and non-technical aspects. We thus systematically explore the spectrum sharing design space consisting of parameters at different layers. Using this framework, we present a literature review on inter-technology coexistence with a focus on wireless technologies with equal spectrum access rights, i.e. (i) primary/primary, (ii) secondary/secondary, and (iii) technologies operating in a spectrum commons. Moreover, we reflect on our literature review to identify possible spectrum sharing design solutions and performance evaluation approaches useful for future coexistence cases. Finally, we discuss spectrum sharing design challenges and suggest future research directions

ORLA/OLAA: Orthogonal Coexistence of LAA and WiFi in Unlicensed Spectrum

Future mobile networks will exploit unlicensed spectrum to boost capacity and meet growing user demands cost-effectively. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has recently defined a License Assisted Access (LAA) scheme to enable global Unlicensed LTE (U-LTE) deployment, aiming at 1) ensuring fair coexistence with incumbent WiFi networks, i.e., impacting on their performance no more than another WiFi device; and 2) achieving superior airtime efficiency as compared with WiFi. We show the standardized LAA fails to simultaneously fulfill these objectives, and design an alternative orthogonal (collision-free) listen-before-talk coexistence paradigm that provides a substantial improvement in performance, yet imposes no penalty on existing WiFi networks. We derive two optimal transmission policies, ORLA and OLAA, that maximize LAA throughput in both asynchronous and synchronous (i.e., with alignment to licensed anchor frame boundaries) modes of operation, respectively. We present a comprehensive evaluation through which we demonstrate that, when aggregating packets, IEEE 802.11ac WiFi can be more efficient than LAA, whereas our proposals attains 100% higher throughput, without harming WiFi. We further show that long U-LTE frames incur up to 92% throughput losses on WiFi when using 3GPP LAA, whilst ORLA/OLAA sustain >200% gains at no cost, even in the presence of non-saturated WiFi and/or in multi-rate scenarios.This work was supported in part by the EC H2020 5G-Transformer Project under Grant 761536

Spectrum Sharing, Latency, and Security in 5G Networks with Application to IoT and Smart Grid

The surge of mobile devices, such as smartphones, and tables, demands additional capacity. On the other hand, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and smart grid, which connects numerous sensors, devices, and machines require ubiquitous connectivity and data security. Additionally, some use cases, such as automated manufacturing process, automated transportation, and smart grid, require latency as low as 1 ms, and reliability as high as 99.99\%. To enhance throughput and support massive connectivity, sharing of the unlicensed spectrum (3.5 GHz, 5GHz, and mmWave) is a potential solution. On the other hand, to address the latency, drastic changes in the network architecture is required. The fifth generation (5G) cellular networks will embrace the spectrum sharing and network architecture modifications to address the throughput enhancement, massive connectivity, and low latency. To utilize the unlicensed spectrum, we propose a fixed duty cycle based coexistence of LTE and WiFi, in which the duty cycle of LTE transmission can be adjusted based on the amount of data. In the second approach, a multi-arm bandit learning based coexistence of LTE and WiFi has been developed. The duty cycle of transmission and downlink power are adapted through the exploration and exploitation. This approach improves the aggregated capacity by 33\%, along with cell edge and energy efficiency enhancement. We also investigate the performance of LTE and ZigBee coexistence using smart grid as a scenario. In case of low latency, we summarize the existing works into three domains in the context of 5G networks: core, radio and caching networks. Along with this, fundamental constraints for achieving low latency are identified followed by a general overview of exemplary 5G networks. Besides that, a loop-free, low latency and local-decision based routing protocol is derived in the context of smart grid. This approach ensures low latency and reliable data communication for stationary devices. To address data security in wireless communication, we introduce a geo-location based data encryption, along with node authentication by k-nearest neighbor algorithm. In the second approach, node authentication by the support vector machine, along with public-private key management, is proposed. Both approaches ensure data security without increasing the packet overhead compared to the existing approaches

ORLA/OLAA: Orthogonal Coexistence of LAA and WiFi in Unlicensed Spectrum

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-free) listen-before-talk coexistence paradigm that provides a substantial improvement in performance, yet imposes no penalty on existing WiFi networks. We derive two LAA optimal transmission policies, ORLA and OLAA, that maximize LAA throughput in both asynchronous and synchronous (i.e., with alignment to licensed anchor frame boundaries) modes of operation, respectively. We present a comprehensive performance evaluation through which we demonstrate that, when aggregating packets, IEEE 802.11ac WiFi can be more efficient than 3GPP LAA, whereas our proposals can attain 100% higher throughput, without harming WiFi. We further show that long U-LTE frames incur up to 92% throughput losses on WiFi when using 3GPP LAA, whilst ORLA/OLAA sustain $>$200% gains at no cost, even in the presence of non-saturated WiFi and/or in multi-rate scenarios.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networkin

A Survey of Resource Allocation Techniques for Cellular Network’s Operation in the Unlicensed Band

With an ever increasing demand for data, better and efficient spectrum operation has become crucial in cellular networks. In this paper, we present a detailed survey of various resource allocation schemes that have been considered for the cellular network’s operation in the unlicensed spectrum. The key channel access mechanisms for cellular network’s operation in the unlicensed bands are discussed. The various channel selection techniques are explored and their operation explained. The prime issue of fairness between cellular and Wi-Fi networks is discussed, along with suitable resource allocation techniques that help in achieving this fairness. We analyze the coverage, capacity, and impact of coordination in LTE-U systems. Furthermore, we study and discuss the impact and discussed the impact of various traffic type, environments, latency, handover, and scenarios on LTE-U’s performance. The new upcoming 5G New Radio and MulteFire is briefly described along with some of the critical aspects of LTE-U which require further research. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland