Cellular architecture enhancement for supporting the european licensed shared access concept

As the demand for mobile traffic continues to grow rapidly, finding exclusive bands for mobile network operators in a harmonized manner becomes increasingly challenging. New European spectrum regulatory development aims at allowing future cellular networks to access shared spectrum bands under the licensed shared access regime as a complementary approach to current exclusive licensed and license-exempt bands. The introduction of additional spectrum by new spectrum access methods seems a necessary evolution path for cellular mobile communication networks to respond to the growing traffic in the next decade. The inclusion of the shared bands will require modifications to the existing network management as their availability and access conditions may vary locally and temporarily according to the agreed licensing conditions. Self-organizing network features will undoubtedly become an important enabler to handle the increased complexity brought by licensed shared access methods. In this article, self-organizing networking features to support the licensed shared bands are introduced. In particular, automated load balancing decisions by traffic steering are examined in detail with the purpose of matching the mobile network operators´ available radio access technologies, cells, and spectrum resources to the fluctuating traffic demand.