Coexistence & sharing between LTE-Advanced & 3.5GHZ FSS frequency spectrum

Abstract

World have seen vast development in wireless communication standards to accomplish the emerging demands of higher speed real-time and multimedia functional communication needs. World Radio Conference 2007 (WRC 2007) has discussed the details of the breakthrough standard called LTE Advanced, a system which is beyond IMT-2000 or also known as 4G. While International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is working on evaluating suitable specification design to be deployed for LTE Advanced, WRC 2007 has concurrently work to identify suitable frequency bands for the LTEAdvanced to operate. It is obvious from the recommendations that frequency band of 3400MHz until 3600MHz is proposed for Asian countries, including Malaysia. Another frequency band from 3400MHz and 4200MHz is actively used by fixed satellite services (FSS) downlink operations as well. This co-existence and frequency band sharing especially involving the frequency band of 3400MHz to 3600MHz requires stringent interference studies, to determine if both systems could operates sideby- side without interfering each other. The interference of LTE Advanced towards Fixed Satellite Services (FSS) system when they co-exist and share the same operating frequency band is expected to cause severe downtime, economical losses, and potential safety threat to the users. This is because of the wide usage of FSS applications in critical applications such as business transaction data communication, healthcare remote multimedia communication, and even the military services. This justify the criticality of performing coexistence and sharing study between these two systems, and appropriate mitigation steps to ensure both systems could work side-by-side without killing one another out. This research is started with extensive literature review works. It is then followed by identifying the scope of simulation scenario to be performed in this case. Next is to identify the accurate simulation parameters for the given simulation scenario. These values represent systems characteristics to be simulated and must be accurately feed in, ensuring accurate results. It is then being brought up to perform the simulation work itself. Simulation work is started with initial system parameter values, which are then being varied to check variations of results. Spectrum Engineering Advanced Monte Carlo Analysis Tool (SEAMCAT) software is used to simulate and calculate possibilities of interference and system’s compatibility between the two infrastructures. Results obtained from these variations provide clearer understanding and able to suggest appropriate mitigation plan; the physical distance and operating frequency distance values in this case. A firm conclusion is made following the above findings, and appropriate future works could be suggested then. Based on the simulation works done in SEAMCAT, the co-existence and sharing between LTE Advanced and FSS system operating at the 3500MHz, the physical separation distance needed between these systems are impractically huge. Oppose to that, the minimum frequency distance of 25 MHz is needed between the operating frequency of both systems to operate without interference from each other when FSS bandwidth used is 4KHz. In addition, the minimum frequency distance of 8MHz is needed between the operating frequency of both systems is required to operate without interference from each other when FSS bandwidth used is 36MHz.