On the Coexistence among WiMAX-TDD, TD-LTE, and TD-SCDMA

With several advantages such as flexible downlink-to-uplink(DL-to-UL) ratio and flexible spectrum usage, Time Division Duplexing(TDD) is emerging as an alternate to Frequency Division Duplexing(FDD), especially in wireless broadband systems. We already have at least four different TDD systems in the industry: Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access(TD-SCDMA), IEEE 802.16e-TDD, IEEE 802.16m-TDD, and Time Division-Long Term Evolution(TD-LTE). A disadvantage of TDD is that tight coordination such as time synchronization between adjacent operators is required to prevent interference between the adjacent TDD systems. In this paper, we investigate coexistence scenarios among the above four well-known TDD systems and calculate spectral efficiency(SE) loss in each scenario. Our findings are that SE loss can be significant if TDD ratios of the adjacent operators are considerably different. However, as long as the TDD ratios of the adjacent operators are similar, configurations in the systems permit perfect time synchronization between the two heterogeneous TDD systems, and the resulting SE loss is zero or reasonably low. We believe that the above findings and the configurations of the TDD systems recommended tominimize SE loss will be helpful for operators who deploy TDD systems in system parameter determination and cross-operator coordination.