RAN Evaluation of LTE-FemtocellDeployment and TV White SpaceSecondary Usage

Abstract: Femtocells and secondary usage of TV white space are two non-mainstream technologies currently at the research edge of mobile industries and academia. However, femtocells have been exclusively assesed by the mobile operators' point of view, while the TV white space secondary usage concept is being nurtured and has a long way to cover until it becomes technically mature. With incumbent and newly entering stakeholders challenged to nd cost-eective ways of serving and exploiting the sharply increasing mobile trac, evaluating the techno-economic and operational benets of these solutions from a variant perspective becomes highly valued, but related methodologies are still missing. This dissertation addressed this gap by proposing a method for the development and techno-economic evaluation of LTE-femtocells and secondary usage of TV white space considering four dierent types of operators: mobile network operators, wireless internet service providers, facility owners, and TV white space only operators. These actors were examined as LTE-femtocell network operators delivering indoor mobile broadband over the three distinct spectrum paths of licensed, unlicensed, and TV white space spectrum. The network modeling and assessment took into account the assets each actor can activate to deploy and operate the LTE-femto networks in order to generate actor-customized results. The main ndings were that the LTE-femtocell venture is in all cases economically feasible. The indoor LTE-femto networks can deliver 5 Mbps average capacity to 1000 users under stable costs, while when trac becomes even greater, bandwidth becomes the preminent factor dening the femto network total cost of ownership. Under ideal assumptions, the TV white space secondary usage was found to bear substantial cost reduction benets compared to licensed spectrum femto deployments, while unlincensed operation was shown to constitute the most cost-eective alternative. Licensed operation might not be the most resource-ecient solution according to the research's ndings, but is the only solution guaranteeing quality of service at the time.