Radio Protection Area Estimation Methods for Spectrum Sharing-based 5G System

The full-scale operation of the 5th generation mobile communication (5G) system was started in several countries. In Japan, in addition to the 5G nationwide public network service provided by telecommunications carriers, the local 5G (i.e., a private 5G network self-operated by various entities to flexibly configure and use a dedicated network within their buildings or premises) is attracting attention. As the local 5G systems become more widespread in the future, many local 5G systems will need to coexist in nearby areas. Therefore, estimating operational area of local 5G systems and avoiding interference between them will be important. Conventionally, the free-space propagation (FS) and the extended-Hata (EH) models are well-known as radio propagation estimation methods. However, they have problems to calculate the radio protection area from the interference and cause wasteful protection area setting or the lack of the radio protection. In this paper, we propose two novel methods for estimating the radio protection area to achieve both high spectrum efficiency and interference protection. In the proposed methods, the effect of single-knife edge diffraction is considered to the conventional models. The proposed methods are evaluated by using measurement results of actual radio propagation experiments in the campus field of Kyoto University.