Roam on the fly (ROTF): a complementary roaming policy.

The indispensable need to realize smart cities, the cellular network, and particularly 5G, as the common denominator infrastructure for the coexistence of many other wireless technologies, is the apparent enabler infrastructure. One of the significant challenges in cellular networks is continual connectivity. In the wake of ever-increasing time-dependent demand and high mobility, this challenge cannot be adequately addressed by either conventional solutions such as cell splitting, roaming, and base stations number increase or far-from-practical yet unregulated wireless cognitive networks. The proposed roaming service concept, roaming-on-the-fly, complements the classic roaming in many otherwise non-served situations by providing more efficient spectrum utilization management through obviating high-level telecommunications agreements, employing a shared-economy model, and adoption of Ad-Hoc payment methods. The simulation results clearly show elevated visited operator income and uncompromised primary user satisfaction while establishing traditionally-impossible visiting-user services. The spectrum management scheme and the business model in this proposal are as simplistic as possible to make the concept, not the implementation details, the center of focus. More improvements are in perspective by introducing a more delicate spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]