Spectrum Saving through Fixed Mobile Convergence: Mobile Bandwidth Saving Estimate Model

Abstract

The Indian domestic telecom sector has seen phenomenal growth over the past few years. The number of mobile phone subscribers in India has already crossed 500 million by December 2009 and increasing at about 15 million subscribers per month. This phenomenal growth also has lead to poor quality of service with frequent call drop outs, and so on, due to heavy traffic congestion, especially in urban areas. The problem is compounded further by the limited amount of spectrum available for mobile cellular networks. This leads to a situation where the mobile service provider has to significantly increase the number of cell sites for capacity enhancement with attendant costs on infrastructure development. The adoption of emerging Next Generation Network techniques coupled with Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) could alleviate the problems to a large extent. The FMC concept for spectrum saving is based on the concept of utilization of an existing resource in the form of fixed telephone lines for diverting the traffic on mobile networks in scenarios where such diversion will not affect the user service requirements. The enabling technologies that can lead to FMC have also been identified from user’s perspective. A mathematical model has been developed to estimate the amount of spectrum that can be saved through FMC. Parametric analysis has been carried out with respect to the parameters, which influence the spectrum saving. The model has been applied on real life networks to demonstrate the percentage of spectrum that can be saved. The spectrum thus saved can be used for increasing the number of mobile users without any addition to the existing mobile network infrastructure.