Inter-Operator Dynamic Spectrum Selection in UMTS

Dynamic and flexible spectrum management schemes can improve spectrum utilization efficiency and hence are promising approaches to satisfy the increasing demand for radio spectrum. This paper investigates the possibility for competing network operators to partially cooperate without any operational information exchange and to exploit the instantaneous opportunities for sharing which appear within each network. Under the proposed two novel Dynamic Spectrum Selection (DSS) protocols all handsets have a primitive cognitive ability in order to enable multi-operator functionalities for inter-operator DSS.