Uplink Channel Access Enhancement for Cellular Communication in Unlicensed Spectrum

3GPP cellular communications in unlicensed spectrum allow transmission only after completing listen-before-talk (LBT) operation. For downlink, the LBT operation helps cellular traffic to coexist well with Wi-Fi traffic. However, cellular uplink transmission is attempted only at the time specifically determined by the base station after having a successful LBT and the user equipment (UE) may suffer transmission failure and delayed transmission due to Wi-Fi interference. As a result, cellular uplink traffic does not coexist well with Wi-Fi traffic. This article mathematically analyzes the problem of unfairness between cellular and Wi-Fi for uplink channel access. To address the coexistence problem in unlicensed spectrum, we propose a standard-compliant approach, termed UpChance, which allows the UE to use a minimum length of uplink reservation signal and the base station to determine the optimal timing for the UE's uplink transmission. Through ns-3 simulation, we verify that UpChance improves the performance of fairness and random access completion time by up to 88% and 99%, respectively.