Dynamic Spectrum Access, Phase 1 Scenarios and research challenges

Abstract

The currently used mechanisms for spectrum management are a contributing factor to the long lead times from innovation to market in wireless technologies andsystems. This has in turn been a major contributing factor to the dominance of the large telecom companies in the European and World markets, whereas very few innovative enterprises have exhibited consistent growth, although the technicalcompetence in Sweden is very high in this area. Alternative spectrum management regimes, such as the introduction of unlicensed bands have proven very effective in lowering entry thresholds for smaller companies (e.g the WLAN business). In addition, experts claim that the spectrum requirements for communication purposes will increase by as much as 200-300 % up to 2010. At the same time the actual usage of the electromagnetic spectrum is very inefficient.The project aims at studying new more, flexible, spectrum allocation regimeswhich, in combination with new technologies, such as multi-radio access, novelbroadband access techniques, software defined radio and spatial techniques (e.g.smart antennas, multi-hop schemes) have the potential of lowering the entry thresholds for new actors and provide radical improvement to the efficiency ofspectrum usage. Further the aim is to investigate the economic and regulatory consequences of such Dynamic Spectrum Access technologies and managementregimes. The results will provide input to future policies in spectrum management. The project has been divided into a first, pre-study phase and a second, research phase. The first phase was launched in Dec of 2004 and the second phase is planned to start in Jan 2005. The first phase of the project, reported here, has the aim toprovide a qualitative assessment of the potential benefits of dynamic spectrum access regimes. The analysis in the report and other studies in the area, indeed indicate there is a potential to both lower the entry thresholds for new actors as well as provide radical improvement to the efficiency of spectrum usage. The area isdefinitely of significant issues and the project should be continued studying the DSA concepts in more detail.Further, using a systematic procedure, a number of critical areas and bottleneck problems were identified. Our conclusion is that more research is needed in theseareas to achieve the above mentioned benefits. As `side effect' in this procedure, a number of novel and interesting spectrum management concepts were derived, e.g.the `real-time spectrum trading' and `use rights' concepts. Out of this gross list ofinterest problems, a number of highly important problems were selected, matching the competence of the project team. These problems are proposed to be the focus ofthe next phase in the project.Finally, the report provides an overview of the most important ongoing research and policy-making activities in the DSA-area.