With increasing data requirements of users, cellular operators are finding new ways to fulfil these requirements. These attempts involve the practice of deploying Wi-Fi access points nearer to the user and backhauling it to the nearest eNB (in case of LTE and LTE-A). The paper studies LTE-U, an extension of LTE which works in the unlicensed spectrum, as a potential solution to this problem. It is based on the idea of densification. Network deployments incorporating LTE-U will be able to better cater to the growing data rate demand of voice and video, thus reducing the load on eNB. Further we explore the possibility of LTE-U as an alternative to Wi-Fi or co-existing with Wi-Fi deployments and issues revolving around this idea. We show that LTE-U deployment solves the problem of capacity in both cases.

翻译：随着用户数据需求的日益增长，蜂窝运营商正在寻求新途径以满足这些需求。这些尝试涉及在用户附近部署Wi-Fi接入点，并将其回传至最近的eNB（适用于LTE和LTE-A）。本文研究了LTE-U——一种在非授权频谱上工作的LTE扩展技术——作为此问题的潜在解决方案，其核心理念是网络致密化。融合LTE-U的网络部署能够更有效地满足语音和视频业务日益增长的速率需求，从而减轻eNB负载。此外，我们探讨了LTE-U作为Wi-Fi替代方案或与Wi-Fi共存的可能性，以及围绕该思路的相关问题。研究结果表明，LTE-U部署在两种情况下均能有效解决容量问题。