Cloud Miracles: Heterogeneous Cloud RAN for Fair Coexistence of LTE-U and Wi-Fi in Ultra Dense 5G Networks

Due to a tremendous increase in mobile traffic, mobile operators have started to restructure their networks to offload their traffic in the unlicensed bands. The 3GPP new technologies of LAA and LTE-U employ an unlicensed radio interface that operates over the 5 GHz unlicensed band to leverage the radio resources for operators' transmissions. 5G relies on spectrum extension using multi-radio interfaces accessing multiple bands such as LAA and LTE-U. However, the physical and MAC layer designs for LTE-based systems have a significant impact on Wi-Fi performance to maintain a fair share of unlicensed spectrum. Therefore, this article proposes a coexistence mechanism that manages backoff for LTE-U and Wi-Fi when accessing the 5 GHz band. The new mechanism allocates certain amounts of packets to both technologies through a new interface that resides in a heterogeneous cloud RAN.