Spectrum is the key resource for all wireless communications. This workshop will bring together experts from the field of Spectrum Aggregation and Sharing to give an overview of the state-of-the art, to disseminate their latest developments, and to discuss the future of these two technologies and in particular their potential impact on the coming 5G systems. This workshop is supported and organized by the 3 most important EU-funded projects (ADEL and SOLDER from FP7 and SPEED-5G from H2020) currently working on different aspects of spectrum management, aggregation and sharing technologies.

Spectrum for cellular communications up to 4G is owned almost exclusively by operators or incumbents, or is unlicensed. This model is likely to change in 5G, where new spectrum band and types will be added to the game and new sharing paradigms will come into play. Already 3GPP release 13 foresees the aggregation of licensed with unlicensed bands (also known as licensed assisted access (LAA) or LTE-WLAN aggregation (LWA)). Moreover several trials are currently ongoing in different areas of the world to evaluate the feasibility and acceptance of licensed shared access (LSA). These new paradigms require new multi-band transmission techniques, new cooperative approaches to resource sharing and allocation, spectrum sensing and information exchange, control and data planes, fairness and revenue schemes.