Experimental evaluation of dynamic licensed shared access operation in live 3GPP LTE system

As next-generation mobile networks are rapidly taking shape driven by the target standardization requirements and initial trial implementations, a range of accompanying technologies prepare to support them with more reliable wireless access and improved service provisioning. Among these are more advanced spectrum sharing options enabled by the emerging Licensed Shared Access (LSA) regulatory framework, which aims to efficiently employ the capacity of underutilized frequency bands in a controlled manner. The concept of LSA promises to equip network operators with the much needed additional spectrum on the secondary basis and thus brings changes to the existing cellular network management. Hence, additional research is in prompt demand to determine the required levels of Quality of Service (QoS) and service provisioning reliability, especially in cases of dynamic geographical and temporal LSA sharing. Motivated by this recent urge and having at our disposal a fully-functional 3GPP LTE cellular deployment, we have committed to implement and trial the principles of dynamic LSA-compatible spectrum management. This paper is our first disclosure on the comprehensive experimental evaluation of this promising technology. We expect that these unprecedented practical results together with the key lessons learned will become a valuable reference point for the subsequent integration of flexible LSA-based services, suitable for inter-operator and multi-tenant spectrum sharing. © 2016 IEEE.