Spectrum sharing in the EU and the path towards standardization

This paper addresses the current regulatory framework, research activities and standardization efforts towards a shared use of radio spectrum in the European Union. Two main research streams are considered: The emerging concept of Licensed Shared Access that ensures a predictable Quality of Service for secondary users of spectrum and the opportunistic Device-to-Device communications that represent a recent and enormous socio-technological trend. The paper presents also research results that support the spectrum sharing standardization path in ETSI and 3GPP.