Analysis of Hybrid Medium Access Control with WiFi mechanism integration over Unlicensed Spectrum

Demand for high data rates with tremendous growth of mobile phones having WiFi access capabilities is increasing multifold and poses a severe challenge in implementation. To overcome this, secondary component carriers of Long Term Evolution are started using 5GHz unlicensed spectrum which is typically associated with WiFi. The coexistence achieved under hybrid scenario of Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) based listen before talk mechanism including modified Frame Based Equipment(FBE) and Load Based Equipment(LBE) with WiFi access mechanism to attain more channel access opportunities is proposed. The modified MAC mechanism incorporates RTS/CTS handshaking procedures for alleviating hidden node problem in downlink transmission for avoiding data collision. The coexistence is evaluated through simulations and performance is measured using parameters such as Fairnessindex, Channeloccupancy and Throughput. Simulation results show that modified FBE mechanism considerably improve the coexistence performance in terms of fairness access and throughput resulting in mobile user's benefits.