Spectrum Sharing: Overview and Challenges of Small Cells Innovation in the Proposed 3.5 GHz Band

Abstract

Spectrum sharing between Federal and commercial users is a technique proposed by the FCC and NTIA to open up the 3.5 GHz band for wireless broadband use and small cell technology is one of the candidates for its' realization. The traffic on small cells is temporal and their chances of interfering with other services in shared spectrum are limited. DoD has a documented requirement of 865 MHz by 2025 to support telemetry but only 445 MHz is presently available. DoD is conducting researches to realize test and evaluation spectrum efficient technology with the aim to develop, demonstrate, and evaluate technology components required to enable flight and ground test telemetry operations. This paper will provide an overview on spectrum sharing using small cell technology for LTE-Advanced and dynamic spectrum access would be briefly described. Research challenges for protocols and algorithms would be addressed for future studies.