Applications of intelligent radio technologies in unlicensed cellular networks - A survey

Demands for high-speed wireless data services grow rapidly. It is a big challenge to increasing the network capacity operating on licensed spectrum resources. Unlicensed spectrum cellular networks have been proposed as a solution in response to severe spectrum shortage. Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) was standardized by 3GPP, aiming to deliver data services through unlicensed 5 GHz spectrum. Furthermore, the 3GPP proposed 5G New Radio-Unlicensed (NR-U) study item. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) has attracted enormous attention to implement 5G and beyond systems, which is known as Intelligent Radio (IR). To tackle the challenges of unlicensed spectrum networks in 4G/5G/B5G systems, a lot of works have been done, focusing on using Machine Learning (ML) to support resource allocation in LTE-LAA/NR-U and Wi-Fi coexistence environments. Generally speaking, ML techniques are used in IR based on statistical models established for solving specific optimization problems. In this paper, we aim to conduct a comprehensive survey on the recent research efforts related to unlicensed cellular networks and IR technologies, which work jointly to implement 5G and beyond wireless networks. Furthermore, we introduce a positioning assisted LTE-LAA system based on the difference in received signal strength (DRSS) to allocate resources among UEs. We will also discuss some open issues and challenges for future research on the IR applications in unlicensed cellular networks.