On spectrum sharing among micro-operators in 5G

The growing demand in indoor small cell networks has given rise to the concept of micro-operators (MOs) for local service delivery. We model and analyze a spectrum sharing system involving such MOs where a buyer MO buys multiple licensed subbands provided by the regulator. All small cell base stations (SBSs) owned by a buyer MO can utilize multiple licensed subbands. Once the buyer MO obtain subbands, it allows other MOs to share these subbands. A deterministic model in which the location of the SBSs are known can lead to unwieldy problem formulation, when the number of SBSs is large. As such, we adopt a stochastic geometric model of the SBS deployment instead of a deterministic model. Assuming that the locations of the SBSs can be modeled as a homogeneous Poisson point process, we find the downlink signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability and average data rate for a typical user (UE) served by the buyer MO in a spectrum sharing environment. In order to satisfy the QoS constraint, we provide a greedy algorithm to find how many licensed subbands and which subband the buyer MO should purchase from the regulator. We also derive the coverage probability of the buyer MO for interference limited system.