Licensed Shared Access in distributed antenna systems enabling network virtualization

A distributed antenna system (DAS) architecture is considered to be a key enabler for further Network Virtualization where different network configurations are created as needed by a centralized decision making unit that is typically integrated into the Cloud Radio Access Network (C-RAN) which offers a potential architecture for 5G wireless communication systems. Many schemes have been proposed for Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) for resource allocation in the static cellular network architecture. In this paper, we investigate using the emerging Licensed Shared Access (LSA) on the downlink cell edge in a Network Virtualization context. We derive a threshold of the LSA bandwidth ratio for the average capacity and analyze the average capacity gain. This provides a guide in the decision making for using LSA bandwidth in DAS with Network Virtualization.