UNLICENSED BAND USAGE BY BOTH UNLICENSED RADIO TECHNOLOGY AND A HIGHER PRIORITY RADIO TECHNOLOGY

Systems and methods are disclosed herein that enable protecting a higher priority radio technology (e.g., 3GPP New Radio (NR) or NR in Unlicensed spectrum (NR-U)) when co-existing with an unlicensed radio technology (e.g., the Wi-Fi wireless network technology) operating in the same frequency band. In one embodiment, a method of operation of a radio access node of radio access network of a cellular communications system comprises transmitting a Request to Send (RTS) frame within a Time Division Duplexing (TDD) radio frame on a cell served by the radio access node in an unlicensed frequency band. The method further comprises transmitting a downlink transmission to a wireless communication device or receiving an uplink transmission from the wireless communication device, on the cell served by the radio access node in the unlicensed spectrum during a period of time that corresponds to a duration of time indicated in the RTS frame.