The IEEE 802.16 and 802.11a Coexistence in the License-Exempt Band

Broadband wireless access technology is developed very fast in recent years. The IEEE 802.16 and 802.11a are two broadband wireless access system standards for metropolitan and local areas respectively. The IEEE 802.11a works in the license-exempt (LE) band, and the IEEE 802.16 is designed such that it can operate in the same LE spectrum too. Although the two systems work in different environments, interference can exist under some scenario. In this paper, the coexistence issues of the two types of networks are investigated and a simple and accurate way for bit-error-ratio (BER) calculation is given. The analysis is also verified by Monte Carlo simulations. Furthermore, in our work, we also show how our research production is used to configure the coexisting IEEE 802.16 and 802.11a systems to mitigate the interference.