Fifth-generation mobile network (5G) will be rolled out to meet business and consumer demands by 2020. Driven by the explosion in mobile-connected devices, the amount of mobile data traffic in 5G will be unprecedented. To cope with the excessive traffic, wireless local area network (WLAN) standards like WiFi, and cellular standards like LTE are proposed to be integrated. Such a network where WLAN standards and cellular standards are integrated is referred to as a WLAN/cellular integrated network (WCIN).

This dissertation studies throughput optimization for the WCIN in 5G. The novelty here is the utilization of partially overlapped WiFi channels (POCs). Briefly, a POC is essentially a WiFi channel that is partially overlapped by LTE component carriers. Since most WiFi users negl...[ Read more ]

Fifth-generation mobile network (5G) will be rolled out to meet business and consumer demands by 2020. Driven by the explosion in mobile-connected devices, the amount of mobile data traffic in 5G will be unprecedented. To cope with the excessive traffic, wireless local area network (WLAN) standards like WiFi, and cellular standards like LTE are proposed to be integrated. Such a network where WLAN standards and cellular standards are integrated is referred to as a WLAN/cellular integrated network (WCIN).

This dissertation studies throughput optimization for the WCIN in 5G. The novelty here is the utilization of partially overlapped WiFi channels (POCs). Briefly, a POC is essentially a WiFi channel that is partially overlapped by LTE component carriers. Since most WiFi users neglect to use POCs, their spectrum is wasted which further hinders WCIN throughput from becoming optimal.

To optimize WCIN throughput, this dissertation investigates the resource allocation in WCIN by considering POCs. We deliver three fundamental contributions: We first study the POC model and present a measurement-based method to detect the POC in WCIN. Next, we empirically study the feasibility of enhancing WCIN throughput by utilizing POCs. Finally, we formulate the resource allocation in WCIN as a joint channel assignment and bandwidth allocation problem. A centralized algorithm and a game theoretical framework are introduced to address the two sub-problems, respectively. Our approaches are empirically evaluated in real-world scenarios. The experimental results show that our approaches can further optimize WCIN throughput based on state-of-the-art solutions.