IEEE

The exponential growth of mobile data traffic and the scarcity and costliness of licensed spectrum are driving mobile network operators (MNOs) to consider offloading at least part of their traffic onto the unlicensed spectrum. Most recently, the 3GPP is considering extending the use of LTE into the unlicensed spectrum as a seamless approach to enable traffic offload. This new approach is dubbed LTE Unlicensed (LTE-U). Compared to Wi-Fi, LTE-U offers MNOs a way to offload traffic onto the unlicensed spectrum with a technology that seamlessly integrates into their existing LTE evolved packet core (EPC) architecture. Furthermore, LTE-U promises higher throughout and spectral efficiency than Wi-Fi, with estimates ranging from 2x to 5x improvement over Wi-Fi. Currently two operating modes are under discussion: 1) unlicensed spectrum is aggregated with existing licensed channels and 2) unlicensed spectrum acts as the only carrier for LTE-U where both data and control channels reside.The..

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