  This paper investigates the co-existence of Wi-Fi and LTE in emerging
unlicensed frequency bands which are intended to accommodate multiple radio
access technologies. Wi-Fi and LTE are the two most prominent access
technologies being deployed today, motivating further study of the inter-system
interference arising in such shared spectrum scenarios as well as possible
techniques for enabling improved co-existence. An analytical model for
evaluating the baseline performance of co-existing Wi-Fi and LTE is developed
and used to obtain baseline performance measures. The results show that both
Wi-Fi and LTE networks cause significant interference to each other and that
the degradation is dependent on a number of factors such as power levels and
physical topology. The model-based results are partially validated via
experimental evaluations using USRP based SDR platforms on the ORBIT testbed.
Further, inter-network coordination with logically centralized radio resource
management across Wi-Fi and LTE systems is proposed as a possible solution for
improved co-existence. Numerical results are presented showing significant
gains in both Wi-Fi and LTE performance with the proposed inter-network
coordination approach.
