Generalized Resource Sharing for Multiple Operators in Cellular Networks

Sharing wireless channel resources among cellular network operators saves costs by efficiently utilizing hardware and spectrum. Following the approach of resource sharing, we introduce a general formulation that covers current fixed sharing and dynamic sharing as special cases. This general resource sharing even allows allocation that fall below the agreed sharing ratio. Occasionally penalizing an operator within defined boundaries enables to make opportunistic use of the fading channel. Our simulation results show that this substantially increasing average spectral efficiency, while enabling to trade off sharing guarantees versus system performance.