Heterogeneous Networks in Shared Spectrum Access Communications

Abstract

We investigate an advanced two-phase shared spectrum access communication scheme as an efficient approach to enhance the spectral utilization of a network. In the first phase, we devise a spectrum-sharing policy based on demands, fairness, and so on, which utilizes a priority scheme in fulfilling operators' demands, and envision a secure operator-specific information sharing policy where no critical information is exchanged between the operators. In the second phase, a macro cell network (MCN) benefits through offloading services offered by small cell network (SCN). This allows the MCN to satisfy its users' capacity demands, improve its quality of services and coverage under Nakagami fading channel. As a repayment, the SCN is rewarded with licenses to share and operate on the spectrum originally owned by the MCN. We devise a density division-based shared spectrum access model, where the density of the licensee's SCN deployment is exploited as network resources. A fair division of the densities of the licensee operator's small cell base stations into fractions of licensed small cell base stations serving its own users and offloading small cells is presented. Unlike most of the previous research works that considered Poisson point process (PPP) to model the distribution of the network entities even when PPP modeling is not accurate for the networks, where the number of MCN/SCN base stations is definite and the number of MCN/SCN base stations in disjoint areas is not independent, we employ a more realistic network model known as binomial point process to perform an analytical analysis of the cumulative interference and performance of the system. Furthermore, we analyze the rate coverage and outage performances considering a wide range of values for path-loss exponent and fading severity parameter of Nakagami fading.