Dynamic Spectrum Management through Resource Virtualization with M2M Communications

Wireless spectrum licensing has increased due to the continuous evolution and use of cellular technology. The increase in the number of mobile-connected devices and global data traffic demand has led to a significant increase in demand for spectrum access with studies showing that there is unexploited capacity in the spectrum. This is especially critical for 5G networks where the service requirements are extremely stringent. To that end, this article proposes dynamic spectrum management through the combination of two innovative architectures, wireless resource virtualization (WRV) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. WRV allows for better utilization of the spectrum, while reducing both the capital and operational expenditures. On the other hand, M2M communications can help boost capacity and improve quality of service by leveraging spectrum access across multiple radio technologies. In this article, a brief discussion of multi-radio access technology heterogeneous networks is given. Then the problem of dynamic spectrum management through resource virtualization with M2M communications is described. To the best of our knowledge, such a combined framework has not been previously proposed. Two different algorithms are proposed to evaluate the performance of the considered architecture, namely a decomposition- based algorithm and a greedy-based algorithm. Simulation results show that such architecture can boost the overall capacity of the system by achieving higher data rates. Moreover, it is shown that the number of possibly supported M2M pairs is increased while using the same spectrum.