Quality of service in spectrum pooling systems

Public cellular networks have experienced exponential increase in service demand in recent years. Hence, the public mobile radio spectrum has become a scarce resource while other spectral ranges are only rarely used. Here, a new strategy called spectrum pooling is considered. It aims at enabling public access to rarely used spectral ranges without sacrificing the transmission quality of the actual license owners. The quality of service boundaries in such a system are investigated as demanding wireless multimedia applications produce more and more interest among wireless users. Simulations have been conducted in a spectrum pooling specifically modified HIPERLAN/2 testbed, revealing achievable service guarantees with respect to throughput and delay under different wireless weighted fair scheduling policies. Simulation results show that service guarantees can be met across a wide range of activity (arrival rate) of the accessing license owners. However, if certain activity thresholds are exceeded, service guarantees - especially delay guarantees - have to be renegotiated. Furthermore, performance evaluations concerning the different scheduling policies in a spectrum pooling system are given.