Radio resource sharing

Abstract

An apparatus includes a controller configured to be coupled with a radio interface of a first wireless network node. The controller is further configured to respond to a spectrum emission mask that includes indications of both desirable emissions and undesirable emissions over a plurality of radio resource allocation units and to estimate a signal to noise ratio in individual ones of radio resource allocation units at at least one second node, to select an appropriate modulation-and-coding scheme per radio resource allocation unit and to schedule transmissions for the radio interface on the radio resource allocation units using the selected modulation-and-coding scheme. The controller is further configured to receive via the radio interface a beacon transmission from a second node, where the beacon transmission indicates a receiver sensitivity of the second node. The controller estimates a path loss to the second node that transmitted the beacon in accordance with knowledge of a transmission power with which the beacon was transmitted and considers distortion characteristics associated with the radio interface, the estimated path loss and the estimated signal to noise ratio so as to allocate transmit signal energy such that a sum of the desirable emissions and the undesirable emissions is less than limits imposed by the spectrum emission mask.