Traffic Offloading in Unlicensed Spectrum for 5G Cellular Network: A Two-Layer Game Approach

Area of Science:

• Wireless communication systems
• Telecommunications engineering
• Network optimization

Background:

• Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) is crucial for high-performance 5G networks.
• Listen Before Talk (LBT) and Carrier Sensing and Adaptive Transmission (CSAT) are established coexistence schemes for spectrum sharing.
• Existing CSAT methods face challenges with Long Term Evolution (LTE) data transmission collisions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a modified LBT-based CSAT scheme to minimize LTE transmission collisions.
• To enhance the throughput of both LAA and WiFi systems.
• To introduce a novel two-layer Coalition-Auction Game-based Transaction (CAGT) mechanism for system optimization.

Main Methods:

• A modified LBT-based CSAT scheme is developed to reduce collisions during LTE data transmission.
• A two-layer CAGT mechanism is proposed, featuring coalition formation among Access Points (APs) and an auction game.
• Coalition formation merges lightly loaded APs with heavily loaded APs to offload data and balance WiFi traffic.

Main Results:

• The proposed scheme effectively reduces collisions when LTE initiates data transmission in CSAT mode.
• The CAGT mechanism successfully optimizes performance, leading to improved throughput for both LAA and WiFi systems.
• Simulation results validate the enhanced performance of the proposed LAA and WiFi coexistence strategy.

Conclusions:

• The modified LBT-based CSAT scheme and CAGT mechanism offer an effective solution for LAA and WiFi coexistence.
• The proposed approach significantly improves spectrum utilization and overall system throughput.
• This research contributes to the advancement of efficient and high-performance wireless communication systems.