Recent licensed spectrum sharing development in research and regulation in europe and us:The incumbent spectrumusers perspective

Predictions on the growing mobile traffic have motivated investigations on spectrum sharing concepts to unlock spectrum for mobile use in regulatory and research fora all over the world. This paper presents an overview of recent spectrum sharing regulatory and research development in Europe and US that are aiming to make new spectrum available for mobile communication systems in the bands identified for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) on a shared basis while protecting the rights of the incumbent spectrum users. The efficiency of the spectrum usage on these bands could be significantly increased by authorizing mobile network operators (MNOs) to access bands that are currently used by other type of incumbents, such as satellite, broadcasting etc. In particular, the paper considers the two recent regulatory models: Licensed Shared Access (LSA) from Europe and Three-Tier Hierarchy Model from the US where both incumbents and entrants are guaranteed certain quality of service (QoS) conditions. In this paper, the role of the incumbent as the current holder of spectrum rights of use is highlighted as it is critical for creating a sharing framework that offers attracting operational conditions for both the incumbent and the entrant. Some guidelines are provided on the critical factors and concerns from the incumbent perspective regarding spectrum sharing models. Additionally, some challenges specific to satellite bands are discusse