Transmit beamforming for inter-operator spectrum sharing: From theory to practice

In this paper, four transmit beamforming (BF) techniques are selected and compared to realize inter-operator spectrum sharing, which is a promising solution for the spectrum shortage problem. The BF techniques include two game-theoretic (GT) algorithms, zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE). After a brief description of the BF techniques in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) system, their computational complexity is analyzed. The effectiveness of these techniques in real radio frequency (RF) signal transmission is verified by implementation on a flexible hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testbed. First, several important aspects regarding practical implementation are discussed. Afterwards, the HIL measurement results are shown, where considerable sum rate gain can be observed due to spectrum sharing. Finally, the appropriate BF technique can be chosen based on a tradeoff between complexity and performance.