On The Modeling and Analysis of Uplink and Downlink IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi With LTE in Unlicensed Spectrum

Abstract

The growing demand on data to enhance the user experience has motivated research toward increasing the efficiency of spectrum utilization by extending cellular technology, such as LTE, toward unlicensed bands. In order to study the fair coexistence of LTE and Wi-Fi, we consider the IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard, where we use stochastic geometry to model and analyze the coexistence of LTE with simultaneous uplink and downlink IEEE 802.11ax transmissions. Mainly, we consider LTE with continuous transmissions (no protocol change), LTE with discontinuous transmissions (LTE-U), and licensed-assisted access (LAA) coexistence mechanisms. In addition, we focus on single unlicensed frequency band transmissions, where the locations of Wi-Fi access points, Wi-Fi stations (users), and LTE eNodeBs (eNBs) are modeled as three independent homogeneous Poisson point processes. Then, we derive analytical expressions for a set of performance metrics, which are the medium access probability, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio coverage probability, density of successful transmissions, and Shannon throughput probability for both uplink and downlink of IEEE 802.11ax in addition to LTE. Our analysis quantifies both single-user and multi-user operation modes of the IEEE802.11ax and show that LTE-U or LAA can be a good neighbor for IEEE 802.11ax for different traffic types.