Fairness-Guided DQN-Based TXOP Control for NR-U/Wi-Fi Coexistence

Abstract

New Radio operating in unlicensed spectrum (NR-U) and Wi-Fi employ different contention parameters and channel-occupancy durations, which can produce severe coexistence imbalance. This correspondence develops a fairness-guided deep Q-network (DQN) that adjusts the NR-U transmission opportunity (TXOP) using the observed per-node throughput ratio. Two reward designs, Q1 and Q2, expose complementary operating regimes. Q1 promotes strict per-node throughput balance, whereas Q2 admits a broader inter-radio-access-technology fairness region and rewards throughput improvement in an intermediate fairness band. The policies are compared with the default Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) listen-before-talk (LBT), an adapted multi-armed-bandit method, a utility-fairness-based tabular Q-learning comparator, and a default-referenced fixed-TXOP baseline. Experiments across four priority classes and asymmetric populations report aggregate throughput, user-level Jain fairness, and concave throughput utility over 20 independent trials. The results characterize the cost of strict fairness, efficiency recovery under moderate relaxation, and transfer from symmetric to asymmetric deployments.