A conversation with Narayan Menon, CTO and EVP of Engineering, XCellAir discussing a shared solution to manage Wi-Fi and LTE unlicensed traffic.
Download a transcript of the complete interview and the complete report.
XCellAir a spinoff from InterDigital announced in February 2015, provides a shared solution with which operators can manage large-scale LTE and Wi-Fi networks within a HetNet framework and leveraging SON functionality. Its solution organically expands to include LTE unlicensed as an additional wireless access channel that complements LTE licensed and Wi-Fi.
“The coexistence of the two systems, Wi-Fi and LTE unlicensed, will become very, very critical. One would not displace the other. Wi-Fi will have its own place and continue to have its place in the sun. What this enables is for the LTE solutions to expand and reach out on the unlicensed spectrum and gain more bandwidth,” told us Narayan Menon, CTO and EVP of Engineering at XCellAir.
To achieve this, LTE unlicensed and Wi-Fi have to be nice to each other. “LTE-U should not impact Wi-Fi any more than another Wi-Fi system on the same branch of the system. That’s where listen before talk and similar mechanisms come into play. And on top of that there is traffic steering and traffic management capabilities necessary to place traffic intelligently on one or the other band”, Narayan said.
This conversation is included in the Senza Fili report “LTE Unlicensed and Wi-Fi: Moving Beyond Coexistence”. If you would like to receive a complimentary copy of the report, please click here to download.
