Enhanced auction-assisted LSA

Abstract

Virtual Network Operators (VNOs) that construct networks from a pool of shared resources provide flexibility in how services are offered to the end-user. They also enable dynamic use and release of resources according to the demand. This paper investigates sharing of spectrum and infrastructure by VNOs using Licensed Shared Access (LSA) as a basis. LSA is a European spectrum-sharing framework that enables mobile network operators to share spectrum with the primary spectrum users on an exclusive basis, preserving thus Quality of Service (QoS) for all the licensed users of spectrum. In our work, an auction-based approach to the LSA framework is proposed, with VNOs that share not only spectrum but also infrastructure, i.e. antennas. In that, we avail of massive-MIMO and virtualisation and identify key architectural aspects to enhance the LSA framework. Further, we investigate how our approach performs in terms of the shared resources as a function of the minimum required average user rate and antenna price, where VNOs can lease spectrum in blocks of 5 MHz, according to LSA. We also compare our approach with a fixed allocation of spectrum and antennas, and spectrum alone. The results show that given a particular price of infrastructure (antennas), the proposed auction-based allocation of resources is optimal in terms of the number of VNOs that can be served by the available spectrum, regardless of the user rate.