With the severe spectrum shortage in conventional cellular bands, millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies between 30 and 300 GHz have been attracting growing attention as a possible candidate for next-generation micro- and pico-cellular wireless networks. The mmWave bands offer orders of magnitude greater spectrum than current cellular allocations and enable very high-dimensional antenna arrays for further gains via beam-forming and spatial multiplexing. However, due to unique nature of propagation in these frequencies, cellular systems will need to be significantly redesigned to fully exploit the potential of these frequencies. This project investigates one key dimension in mmWave network design: resource sharing, involving the sharing of spectrum and network infrastructure resources by multiple operators. It is argued that sharing of this form will be essential to fully exploit the tremendous bandwidth and antenna degrees of freedom offered by these bands and also provide statistical multiplexing to accommodate the highly variable nature of traffic.
This inter-disciplinary project explores both the engineering and economic aspects of mmWave resource sharing. On the engineering side, the key challenge is that the spectrum must be shared not only in time and frequency, but also space. In addition, new decentralized mechanisms are required to rapidly reallocate backhaul and core network elements across multiple parties. The project develops signal processing methods, protocols and network optimization algorithms to facilitate directional sharing of spectrum along with dynamic re-routing and load balancing. On the economic and policy side, several shared ownership models under varying forms of licensing agreements between the operators, regulatory agencies and third-party spectrum and resource brokers are investigated. Based on the capacity estimates obtained from the engineering side, economic models are developed to assess key indicators such as operating and capital costs and coalition formation and market concentration.
Featured Group Publications
Shahram Shahsavari, Fraida Fund, Elza Erkip, Shivendra S. Panwar. “Capturing Capacity and Profit Gains with Base Station Sharing in mmWave Cellular Networks,” IEEE INFOCOM 2018 Millimeter-Wave Networked Systems, Honolulu, USA, April 2018.
Fraida Fund, Shahram Shahsavari, Shivendra S. Panwar, Elza Erkip, Sundeep Rangan. “Resource Sharing Among mmWave Cellular Service Providers in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly,” IEEE ICC 2017 Next Generation Networking and Internet Symposium , Paris, France, May 2017.
Fraida Fund, Shahram Shahsavari, Shivendra S. Panwar, Elza Erkip, Sundeep Rangan. “Spectrum and infrastructure sharing in millimeter wave cellular networks: An economic perspective.” arXiv preprint, arXiv:1605.04602 (2016).
Federico Boccardi; Hossein Shokri-Ghadikolaei; Gabor Fodor; Elza Erkip; Carlo Fischione; Marios Kountouris; Petar Popovski; Michele Zorzi. “Spectrum Pooling in MmWave Networks: Opportunities, Challenges, and Enablers,” IEEE Comm Magazine, 2016.
Fraida Fund, Shahram Shahsavari, Shivendra S. Panwar, Elza Erkip, Sundeep Rangan. “Do open resources encourage entry into the millimeter wave cellular service market?,” Proc. ACM MobiCom, 2016
Hossein Shokri-Ghadikolaei, Federico Boccardi, Elza Erkip, Carlo Fischione, Gábor Fodor, Marios Kountouris, Petar Popovski, and Michele Zorzi,. “The Impact of Beamforming and Coordination on Spectrum Pooling in mmWave Cellular Networks,” Proc. IEEE Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers, 2016.