Performance of Splitting LTE-WLAN Aggregation

LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA) combines the radio resources of LTE and WLAN to take advantage of Wi-Fi’s high availability and indoor coverage, which provides better usage of both WLAN and LTE. In LWA, a user data radio bearer (DRB) is split if its packets are delivered through both LTE and Wi-Fi. For a split DRB, it is important to determine the LTE-to-WLAN ratio (LWR) or the ratio of packets delivered by LTE over WLAN. Based on WLAN’s Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), we propose a simple LWR selection rule. Using this rule, we describe a user plane implementation for LWA, where the adaptive LWA routing procedure can be easily implemented in the Radio Resource Management (RRM) and the Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) layer at the LTE eNB. In our implementation, the maximum LWA throughput is 99.14 percent of the optimal cases, and the packet loss rates are less than 0.0042 percent.