Regulatory Pilot on Licensed Shared Access in a Live LTE-TDD Network in IMT Band 40

This paper presents the Italian pilot on licensed shared access (LSA) in the IMT Band 40 to explore the potential and logistics of spectrum sharing from a regulatory perspective. Organized on a small cell/micro cell scale, it verified both the technical feasibility and regulatory compliance of LSA in a real, LTE-TDD network, constrained by the national spectrum use in Band 40. The LSA system was implemented in compliance with the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, ETSI, and 3GPP specifications. We present an innovative distributed architecture implemented across three countries, enabling certain features of 5G networks. We describe the sharing framework and sharing conditions in the Italian scenario for the use cases representing actual incumbents. These were verified through in-field measurements, key results of which are presented. Measurement results show that sharing based on LSA is feasible to provide additional capacity for mobile broadband services in the 2300-2400 MHz band without detriment to incumbent services. Use of commercial off-the-shelf equipment to create new mobile broadband service in an urban indoor/outdoor environment pilot enabled us to assess the spectrum sharing opportunities through LSA technology for general deployment today and toward future policy for 5G spectrum in Italy.