Co-primary Spectrum Sharing for Inter-operator Device-to-Device Communication

The business potential of device-to-device (D2D) communication including public safety and vehicular communications will be realized only if direct communication between devices subscribed to different mobile operators (OPs) is supported. One possible way to implement inter-operator D2D communication may use the licensed spectrum of the OPs, i.e., OPs agree to share spectrum in a co-primary manner, and inter-operator D2D communication is allocated over spectral resources contributed from both parties. In this paper, we consider a spectrum sharing scenario where a number of OPs construct a spectrum pool dedicated to support inter-operator D2D communication. OPs negotiate in the form of a non-cooperative game about how much spectrum each OP contributes to the spectrum pool. OPs submit proposals to each other in parallel until a consensus is reached. When every OP has a concave utility function on the box-constrained region, we identify the conditions guaranteeing the existence of a unique equilibrium point. We show that the iterative algorithm based on the OP's best response might not converge to the equilibrium point due to myopically overreacting to the response of the other OPs, while the Jacobi-play strategy update algorithm can converge with an appropriate selection of update parameter. Using the Jacobi-play update algorithm, we illustrate that asymmetric OPs contribute an unequal amount of resources to the spectrum pool; However all participating OPs may experience significant performance gains compared to the scheme without spectrum sharing.Comment: Accepted to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC

Survey of Spectrum Sharing for Inter-Technology Coexistence

Increasing capacity demands in emerging wireless technologies are expected to be met by network densification and spectrum bands open to multiple technologies. These will, in turn, increase the level of interference and also result in more complex inter-technology interactions, which will need to be managed through spectrum sharing mechanisms. Consequently, novel spectrum sharing mechanisms should be designed to allow spectrum access for multiple technologies, while efficiently utilizing the spectrum resources overall. Importantly, it is not trivial to design such efficient mechanisms, not only due to technical aspects, but also due to regulatory and business model constraints. In this survey we address spectrum sharing mechanisms for wireless inter-technology coexistence by means of a technology circle that incorporates in a unified, system-level view the technical and non-technical aspects. We thus systematically explore the spectrum sharing design space consisting of parameters at different layers. Using this framework, we present a literature review on inter-technology coexistence with a focus on wireless technologies with equal spectrum access rights, i.e. (i) primary/primary, (ii) secondary/secondary, and (iii) technologies operating in a spectrum commons. Moreover, we reflect on our literature review to identify possible spectrum sharing design solutions and performance evaluation approaches useful for future coexistence cases. Finally, we discuss spectrum sharing design challenges and suggest future research directions