Simulations for satellite spectrum sharing

Fairspectrum provides software and simulation services for the performance analysis of the spectrum sharing between 5G mobile network and 5G satellite network. When the satellite communication systems use the same 5G technology as the current mobile networks, the coverage of the mobile networks can be extended to become available truly everywhere. One of the obstacles in achieving this is to have enough radio spectrum capacity allocated for the 5G mobile satellite networks. The studied solution for this problem is to allow 5G satellite networks to use the same frequency bands as the mobile networks. This could become possible by applying spectrum sharing technologies.

Fairspectrum has simulated two approaches for spectrum sharing between 5G mobile networks and 5G satellite networks. 3GPP frame based spectrum sharing allows the coverage areas of mobile and satellite networks to overlap. In dynamic spectrum access they cannot overlap. Fairspectrum has developed simulation tools to analyse the performance of these spectrum sharing technologies in various scenarios. The performance metrics include interference, bitrate, coverage and spectrum utilization efficiency.

Dynamic spectrum sharing is an efficient tool to introduce spectrum sharing in non-overlapping areas of 5G mobile networks and 5G satellite networks. The mobile network operators, who are interested to extend their service coverage with 5G satellite networks, can optimize their own networks to decrease the impact from interference and to close the gaps between the mobile and satellite coverage areas using dynamic spectrum sharing. The main benefit in both 3GPP frame based spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum access arrangements is the extension of the 5G network coverage using the satellite network.