Experimenting on LTE-U and WiFi coexistence

LTE technologies for unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U) are receiving an increased attention and gain momentum in an effort to tackle the rising demand for higher connection rates and better quality of experience. Unfortunately, a number of well-established technologies such as WiFi operate in the same frequency bands especially on the ISM range of 2.4GHz. In this paper, we investigate the impact of LTE-U and WiFi coexistence in a number of different environments and examine the performance of an adaptive duty cycle mechanism on the LTE side. We evaluate its impact not only on network throughput but on power consumption as well for all involved nodes. We analyse a number of variables such as the length of duty cycle, the ratio of silent vs active periods and the transmission power. In parallel, we assess the effect of a fully saturated WiFi network on an LTE-U deployment taking into account the WiFi radio transmission power and RTS threshold.