On the impact of varying bandwidth on the performance of UMTS spectrum sharing algorithm

This paper proposes a spectrum sharing algorithm to exploit instantaneous spectrum use during the peak hour between two Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) operators. The algorithm proposes a modification of the current call admission procedure on UMTS networks in order to accommodate users from the other network. A simulator platform has been developed in order to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. The performance of the instantaneous DSA algorithm is compared with Fixed Spectrum Allocation (FSA) when no spectrum sharing takes place. The paper further investigates the impact of increasing the number of carriers on the achievable spectrum sharing gain. The results show that the spectrum efficiency gains up to 4% can be achieved with three carriers per operator. It also shows that additional call setup delays are introduced by the DSA algorithm.