Unified Radio Access Network operation for Multi-Radio Access Technology cellular systems

The architectural structure of Radio Access Networks (RANs) in Multi-Radio Access Technology (RAT) cellular systems is based on the independent iteration of single RAT RANs and statically dividing radio frequency resources between co-deployed RATs, leading to high system complexity and suboptimal spectrum utilization. This paper proposes the unification of RAN operation and presents a scalable RAN architectural structure for multi-RAT cellular systems. Detailed system-level simulations, for a system co-deploying HSPA and LTE, show that joint resource allocation significantly enhances the system performance and outperforms dynamic spectrum management techniques employing disjoint resource allocation.