By Narayan Menon, Angelo Cuffaro, Jean-Louis Gauvreau & Todd Mersch, XCellAir
The primary wireless access technology at the disposal of cable operators today is Wi-Fi. The ubiquitous proliferation, low device cost and lack of spectrum license has made Wi-Fi the clear choice. However, as cable wireless services transition from best effort to managed broadband, the ability to deliver reliable high-performance access using unlicensed spectrum is critical. This paper describes the challenges, techniques and results obtained from intelligently optimizing unlicensed spectrum. It also discusses ways to enable harmonious coexistence of Wi-Fi with new technologies such as LTE License Assisted Access (LTE-LAA), LTE – Wi-Fi Aggregation (LWA) and MuLTEfire (standalone LTE), exploiting techniques being leveraged in today’s Wi-Fi optimization landscape.