LAA-based LTE and ZigBee coexistence for unlicensed-band smart grid communications

The advent of smart grid introduces abundant number of smart meters which require bidirectional reliable communication. The deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in smart grid networks will be auspicious if the existing infrastructure of LTE networks can be utilized. On the other hand, use of LTE infrastructure and spectrum by AMIs will further load the already congested broadband wireless networks. Recently, use of the unlicensed spectrum by the LTE technology is seen as a promising approach to offload the existing traffic from the licensed spectrum. In our study, we investigate the coexistence of LTE and ZigBee networks at the unlicensed frequency band of 2.4 GHz. We consider a time division duplexing (TDD)-LTE system accompanied by ZigBee network with FTP traffic model for system level simulations. The simulation results demonstrate that the simultaneous operation of LTE and ZigBee on the 2.4 GHz band reduces ZigBee's performance, but still meets the data communication requirements for AMI as prescribed by Department of Energy (DoE).