FD MAC Protocol Design for Co-Existing WLANs in 5G Cellular Networks

Abstract In this paper, we design full-duplex (FD) medium access control (MAC) protocol for co-existing wireless local area networks (WLANs) in 5G cellular networks (WCFD-MAC). Our design considers some significant features of 5G networks, exceptionally, beamforming and FD capabilities at both, the base station and user equipment. FD communications may generate interferences, namely self-interference (SI) in bidirectional FD (BFD) and inter-user interferences in three-node FD (TNFD). Several efforts have been performed to mitigate the SI in BFD communications. However, the inter-user interferences in TNFD are still considered as a major drawback in FD networks. These interferences must be mitigated by an efficient MAC protocol design. WCFD-MAC protocol allows two neighboring users to simultaneously participate in TNFD communication without interfering with each other by using directional transmission and a three-node angle condition (TAC). Directional transmission combined with TAC increases system throughput. WCFD-MAC protocol allows a new half-duplex (HD) communication scheme referred to as three-node HD (TNHD). This scheme may occur when bidirectional FD (BFD) and TNFD communications cannot occur. TNHD scheme includes device-to-device (D2D) communication and allows energy efficiency, which is one of the keys requirements of 5G wireless networks. Simulations results show that WCFD-MAC protocol achieves higher throughput than existing works in the literature.