Analysis of Spectrum Needs for Network-Wide Ultra-Reliable Communication with Network Sharing.

Previous works suggest that the magnitude of spectrum needed to support ultra-reliable communication services can be far beyond today's norm (e.g., tens of gigahertz of bandwidth). Multi-operator network sharing, in which mobiles can connect to operators' base stations in the network sharing arrangement, is an alternative way to offset the high demand for spectrum. This paper assesses the spectrum needs for ultra-reliable communication services in multi-operator network sharing. Using meta distributions, we obtain new closed-form expressions for the spectrum needs in two sharing scenarios. Our expressions reveal the relationship between spectrum needs and reliability targets and indicate that multi-operator network sharing, particularly when coupled with multi-connectivity, can reduce the demand for spectrum by orders of magnitude.