DB-LBT: Deterministic Backoff with Listen Before Talk for Wi-Fi/NR-U Coexistence in Shared Bands

The legacy approach to solve coexistence problems between multiple wireless networks operating in the same frequency bands is through network planning. However, this approach is often unfeasible in unlicensed (shared) bands, where different network owners and technologies work without any coordination. In this paper, we adapt an existing channel access scheme for fair resource sharing between Wi-Fi and NR-U (the unlicensed version of 5G), in a completely distributed manner. The idea is to find an ordered schedule of transmissions granted to the active transmitters (regardless of their technology) and repeat this schedule in a round-robin fashion until the set of active transmitters changes. The mechanism works as a special extension of a random access scheme with deterministic backoff counters. Simulation-based results prove that the scheme guarantees airtime fairness between network cells and technologies while optimizing channel efficiency and minimizing channel access delays. Unlike other coexistence solutions, the scheme does not require the exchange of information between the coexisting cells; moreover, it is backward compatible with legacy access schemes.