Performance analysis of LTE and Wi-Fi in unlicensed band using stochastic geometry

In this paper, the multi-channel performance of large scale deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) in Unlicensed (LTE-U) band and WiFi using stochastic geometry is studied. LTE-U and WiFi cell placement is modeled as a Poisson Point Process (PPP), while transmission activity is modeled as hardcore simple sequential inhibition (SSI) point processes, which have been shown to accurately model Carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) access. This stochastic geometry based framework is used to analyze the co-existence of LTE-U and WiFi systems operating in the same set of available channels in unlicensed band. Several interesting results are derived. First, it is shown that fair coexistence can be achieved by LTE-U implementing a Listen-Before-Talk (LBT) protocol. Different variations of LBT are explored to improve the co-existence. Secondly, it is shown that the classical hidden node problem can severely affect performance, and that channel selection mechanisms can significantly alleviate the problem.