Licensed Shared Access evolution enables early access to 5G spectrum and novel use cases

This paper discusses the regulatory and standardization status of the Licensed Shared Access (LSA), compares it with the US Citizens Broadband Radio Service concept, and reviews results from the ongoing feasibility study in the European Telecommunications Standards Institute on temporary spectrum access for local high-quality wireless networks. Based on comparative analysis, a new LSA evolution concept and functional architecture is proposed, and the early results of the world first LSAevo validation are presented. Introduced system architecture can be applied to 3.4-3.8 GHz band so that fragmentation challenges to take the band into 5G use in the European member states can be solved, while ensuring that the communication of the incumbent users, fixed wireless access, fixed links, and satellite earth stations do not experience any harmful interference. In the end-to-end field trial, local high-quality wireless network use case for an industrial automation Micro-operator is validated.