Technical Rate of Substitution of Spectrum in Future Mobile Broadband Provisioning

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of technical rate of substitution (TRS) to compare the effectiveness of spectrum, base station density, and antenna count in future mobile broadband systems, highlighting spectrum's importance.

Contribution

It applies microeconomic TRS analysis to wireless network elements, providing a novel framework for system design optimization.

Findings

TRS increases with higher user data rate demands

Spectrum is the most effective provisioning element for ultra-fast broadband

Numerical results support spectrum's priority in future network planning

Abstract

Dense deployment of base stations (BSs) and multi-antenna techniques are considered key enablers for future mobile networks. Meanwhile, spectrum sharing techniques and utilization of higher frequency bands make more bandwidth available. An important question for future system design is which element is more effective than others. In this paper, we introduce the concept of technical rate of substitution (TRS) from microeconomics and study the TRS of spectrum in terms of BS density and antenna number per BS. Numerical results show that TRS becomes higher with increasing user data rate requirement, suggesting that spectrum is the most effective means of provisioning extremely fast mobile broadband.