A New Paradigm for Spectrum Sharing Between Cellular Wireless Communications and Radio Astronomy Systems

Abstract

This paper proposes a new paradigm for spectrum sharing between cellular wireless communications (CWC) and radio astronomy systems (RAS). In contrast to the existing paradigm of geographical and spectral isolation between CWC and RAS, this paper develops a three phase spectrum access, which enables geographical and spectral coexistence between CWC and RAS. Shared spectrum access zone (SSAZ) is created around the RAS site and CWC cells within the SSAZ follow the three phase spectrum access scheme while those outside the SSAZ have full spectrum access. In addition, system characteristics-based improved spectrum sharing is developed. Furthermore, a built-in fine tuning mechanism is presented for addressing mismatches between design and practical environments as well as for facilitating service evolutions. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that the proposed paradigm offers 1) certain guaranteed spectrum access to RAS, which is impossible in the existing paradigm, 2) capability to handle higher peak and mean traffics to CWC under spectrum restructuring of both CWC and RAS bands, and 3) overall improved spectrum utilization.