Re-Farming of Existing 1800 MHz GSM Spectrum for LTE/LTE-A Deployment in Ghana
Solomon Nunoo, Alhassan Musah · 2019
Communication has been an essential need of human kinds from prehistoric time till date. The ever-increasing needs have led to the development of new standards and technologies. These technologies strive on the limitations of radio spectrum. Licensing of this spectrum is costly to operators and significantly affects their capital expenditure. Regulatory authorities, like the National Communications Authority (NCA), also face much bigger challenge of availability of spectrum. This research proposed re-farming of 1800 MHz GSM spectrum for Third Generation Partnership Project’s Long Term Evolution (LTE) deployment in Ghana is given. Bandwidths of 10, 15, and 20 MHz within the 1800 MHz spectrum were simulated. This is to validate how compliant the proposal will be with regard to practical standards of spectral efficiency and throughput in the LTE market. The results of the simulation show that for bandwidths of 10, 15, and 20 MHz, the maximum and minimum spectral efficiency achieved are 3.19, 3.23 and 3.06 bits/s/Hz and 1.02, 1.06, and 1.06 bits/s/Hz, respectively, with speeds varied from 0 to 200 km/h. Throughput per cell was good across all three bandwidths with 20 MHz band recording the highest of 44.67 Mbps at 0 km/h and 14.09 Mbps at 200 km/h. User Equipment throughput at worst ratio conditions ranged from 2.02 Mbps to 0.35 Mbps for 20 MHz bandwidth for 0 and 200 km/h, respectively. These results compared favourably with LTE standards and data from actual deployed networks across the globe. The findings of this research will be meaningful to stakeholders like the NCA, telecommunication companies in Ghana and other decision making/interested parties in the spectrum management and licensing in Ghana.