Sharing under licensed shared access in a live LTE network in the 2.3–2.4 GHz band end-to-end architecture and compliance results

This paper presents the world's first technical and regulatory pilot on Licensed Shared Access (LSA) in the 3GPP Band 40, i.e. 2.3–2.4 GHz band, enacted in Italy to delve deeper on the role that spectrum sharing has for efficient use of spectrum. The Italian Administration, in collaboration with the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the support of a consortium of industrial partners, has been the first in the world to promote and organize a LSA pilot on a large scale to verify both the technical feasibility and regulatory compliance of this technique applied to a real, live LTE network. The paper firstly introduces the pilot architecture and configuration and describes the sharing framework in the Italian scenario, then key measurements results are presented. The pilot implements a distributed control architecture in compliance with CEPT and ETSI provisions. Measurement results show the sharing based on LSA is feasible to provide mobile broadband services in the 2300–2400 MHz band without detriment to incumbent services.