On the Fairness of Wi-Fi and LTE-LAA Coexistence

With both small-cell LTE and 802.11 networks now available as alternatives for deployment in unlicensed bands at 5 GHz, investigation into their coexistence is a topic of great interest. ETSI Rel. 14 has standardized LTE licensed assisted access (LAA) that seeks to make LTE more coexistence friendly with Wi-Fi by incorporating listen before talk. However, the fairness of Wi-Fi and CFE-LAA sharing is a topic that has not been adequately explored. In this paper, we first investigate the 3GPP definition of fair coexistence via new analytical models. By tuning the LTE-LAA parameters, we exemplify scenarios when the 3GPP notion of fairness is achieved and conversely, when not achieved. The formal notions of access and proportional fairness is then considered for these scenarios to compare and contrast with the 3GPP definition.