Active antenna system enhancement for supporting Licensed Shared Access (LSA) concept

Mobile and wireless communication networks will need to cope with the tremendous increase in data traffic anticipated over the next decade. Beyond the levers of increased network densification and enhanced spectral efficiency more radio spectrum is clearly needed for mobile networks to fulfill capacity and coverage demands. Finding spectrum without existing incumbent usage in a harmonized manner becomes increasingly challenging. Spectrum sharing techniques can be used to optimize spectrum utilization across multiple services to share the same frequency band in a controlled manner. Another emerging technique to enhance cellular network capacity is smart antennas that can flexibly control radiation patterns. These new spectrum efficiency enhancements should be deployed in a way that requires minimum changes to the features and the architecture of the systems involved. In this paper, we concentrate on the Licensed Shared Access (LSA) concept which in recent years has received considerable interest in both European and USA regulation and standardization. We discuss how smart antennas technologies and Active Antenna System (AAS) in particular could be used to enhance LSA systems. Finally, we propose a system architecture and implementation scenarios for LSA that provides spectrum exclusion zone reduction and interference detection by using Active Antenna System.