A new fair-efficient spectrum allocation scheme for the LTE and WiFi coexistence platform

Abstract

AbstractLong-term evolution (LTE) carrier aggregation with the unlicensed WiFi spectrum band has been pointed out as a good solution to handle the rapidly increasing wireless data traffic amounts. With both LTE and WiFi networks, the investigation of their coexistence is a hot research topic of active interest, primarily driven by industry and academia. In this study, we investigate a new spectrum allocation scheme for the LTE/WiFi coexistence platform. To maximize the system throughput while guaranteeing a relative fairness between heterogeneous networks, we adopt the cooperative game paradigm to design our novel scheme. According to the basic ideas of Proportional Nash bargaining solution (PNBS) and Zhang’s group bargaining solution (ZGBS), we can leverage a mutual consensus to provide a fair-efficient solution for the LTE/WiFi spectrum sharing problem. Based on the online interactive bargaining approach, network agents work together to effectively share the LTE and WiFi spectrum resources. Under dynamically changing network environments, it is an essential approach to find the relevant trade-off between conflicting requirements, i.e., fairness and efficiency. Validated by simulation results, our proposed scheme can provide important insights into the LTE/WiFi system operations. Finally, we forecast further research trends on the basis of our conclusion.