Capacity gains due to orthogonal spectrum sharing in multi-operator LTE cellular networks

Abstract

Static spectrum allocation leads to resource wastage and inter-operator spectrum sharing is a possible way to improve spectrum efficiency. In this work, we assume that two cellular network operators agree upon sharing part of their spectrum, which can then be dynamically accessed by either of them in a mutually exclusive way. Our goal is to numerically assess the gain, in terms of cell capacity, due to such orthogonal spectrum sharing. Hence, we propose a centralized algorithm that performs coordinated scheduling, in order to numerically evaluate an upper bound on the achievable sum capacity. The algorithm is centralized and exploits complete information on both networks to perform the optimum allocation. The simulation results illustrate the impact of the multiuser diversity and the asymmetry in the traffic load among the networks on the overall achievable gain.