On the efficiency of dynamic licensed shared access for 5G/6G wireless communications

Onidare, Samuel Olusayo and Navaie, Keivan and Ni, Qiang (2021) On the efficiency of dynamic licensed shared access for 5G/6G wireless communications. PhD thesis, Computing and Communications.

Text (2021onidarephd)
2021onidarephd.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs.
Download (2MB)

Abstract

The licensed shared access (LSA) is a spectrum licensing scheme authorizing additional new users (the licensees) to dynamically share the same spectrum with the old users (the incumbents). Contained in the terms of the spectrum usage authorization is a set of strict protective measures for the incumbent system which introduce extra restrictions on the licensee operations. Such measures imply that the licensee’s access to the spectrum can be revoked or restricted at any time which may result in the degradation of critical performance metrics of the latter. Addressing this issue and the accompanying challenges as we enter the 5G zettabytes era motivates the research problems addressed in this thesis. A vertical LSA spectrum sharing involving a mobile network operator (MNO) as the licensee and two categories of incumbent including the aeronautical telemetry, and a group of terrestrial public and ancillary wireless services is adopted in this thesis. Firstly, an analytical examination of the uplink and downlink licensee’s transmit power, when its spectrum access right is revoked (i.e., the limited transmit power) is done. Then a power allocation scheme that maximizes the energy efficiency (EE) of the licensee when it is operating with limited transmit power is proposed. Simulation results reveal the impact of the LSA spectrum access revocation on the allowable transmit power of the licensee as a function of the effect of different interference propagation path and the transmission direction. A comparison of the proposed optimal power allocation method with the equal power allocation (EPA) method further shows considerable improvement in the achievable EE of the licensee. Furthermore, in the LSA, the achievable spectrum efficiency (SE) of the licensee is limited by the interference threshold constraint set by the incumbent’s protective measures. Consequent on this, we propose an SE maximization of the licensee’s system subject to the incumbent interference threshold constraint. Furthermore, the LSA band spectral utilization was characterised as a function of the licensee’s achievable SE and the statistics of the LSA spectrum availability. The obtained results provide quantitative insights for practical system design and deployment of the LSA system, especially when compared to the results obtained in the maximization of the EE. In particular, the effect of variations in critical operational parameters throws up interesting network design trade-off challenge, worthy of consideration. This informs the subsequent multi objective optimization of the EE-SE trade-off investigated next. Interestingly, the obtained results indicate that with careful selection of the licensee eNodeB coverage radius, transmit power, and number of user equipment per eNodeB coverage area, one can engineer the best possible trade-off between the spectrum and energy efficiency in practical LSA deployment. A major LSA feature is guaranteeing predictable quality of service (QoS) for both the incumbent and the licensee systems. In terrestrial implementation, the reduction in the achievable data rate caused by the incumbents’ protective measures, may violate guaranteed QoS in the licensee system. To address this issue, we propose a LSA - based hybrid aerialterrestrial system with drone base station (D-BS). Simulation results show that using the proposed scheme, the licensee, when operating under the incumbents’ imposed restrictions, is able to achieve the QoS data rate requirements of the users on its network. In conclusion, the findings in this research indicates that the dynamic LSA is a practically viable solution to the spectrum management requirements of the emerging vertical wireless technologies in 5G and beyond.