Spatial Reuse for Coexisting LTE and Wi-Fi Systems in Unlicensed Spectrum

In this paper, we leverage multi-antenna transmit beamforming techniques in order to enable spatial reuse for coexisting LTE and Wi-Fi systems in unlicensed spectrum. For the cellular small cell base stations equipped with multiple transmit antennas and operating in the unlicensed spectrum, some spatial degrees of freedom (DoF)s are dedicated to serving small cell user terminals (SUEs) and others are employed to mitigate interference to the co-existing co-channel Wi-Fi users by applying a linear multi-user precoding technique, such as zero-forcing transmit beamforming (ZFBF). Through careful allocation of spatial DoFs, enhanced spatial reuse of unlicensed spectrum resources can be achieved, thereby improving spectrum efficiency on unlicensed bands. However, due to inherent channel state information (CSI) estimation and feedback errors, ZFBF cannot completely alleviate detrimental co-channel interference effects. After analysing the so-called intra radio technology (intra-RAT) interference among SUEs, i.e., the residual interference caused by imperfect CSI used in ZFBF, and the inter-RAT interference experienced by the Wi-Fi users, we derive the throughput of the co-existing LTE and Wi-Fi systems, respectively. Based on the derived throughput, spatial DoF and power can be optimally allocated to balance the throughput between the small cell and Wi-Fi systems in different scenarios. Our theoretical analysis and proposed schemes are further confirmed with exhaustive numerical simulation results.