Workshop 5B & 6B: Dynamic Spectrum Sharing
Thursday, 26 March (CSE 1202)

In 2013, the members of the Forum undertook a project to identify and synthesize a harmonized view of the results of spectrum sharing research and trials, to identify what products, technologies, regulations and standards are in development to support spectrum sharing, and to articulate what challenges are being addressed and still need to be resolved. This report is being developed for regulators, policy makers, spectrum managers, network planners, and wireless researchers who need to fully understand the state of technologies such as dynamic spectrum access and their ability to facilitate spectrum sharing. Unlike reports from the myriad of individual, independent projects and trials that provide only a limited view of the state of spectrum sharing, the Forum’s Spectrum Sharing Annual Report is intended to consolidate the results from around the world in summary form, providing an easy, unbiased reference for the target audience on the state of spectrum sharing, its viability in specific markets and areas for further research.

The first edition of this report, recently published, includes:

  • Spectrum Measurement Studies and Spectrum Occupancy
  • Regulation of Spectrum Sharing
  • Standards Facilitating Dynamic Spectrum Sharing
  • Spectrum Sharing Testbeds and Trials
  • Spectrum Sharing Research Programs
  • Spectrum Sharing Products and Technologies

In compiling this first edition, the members of the Forum have identified two areas where they have deferred publication of information until the second edition to allow for further development of a reference body of knowledge:

1)      Spectrum Occupancy Measurements. In the first edition of this report, the members of the Forum are cataloging a number of significant spectrum occupancy studies that have been performed, with the initial goal of defining a consolidated view of spectrum availability in various bands around the world. While work on this portion of the report is still in process, an initial critical assessment of these reports has revealed a number of issues with the measurements taken, allowing different reports to provide conflicting results in the same locations and bands. These issues are largely tied to how the data was taken, interpreted and presented, and as such, the Forum intends to outline these issues in this initial study and then seek to address them in follow up work through the establishment of guidelines for measuring spectrum occupancy. In support of this activity, the Forum plans to host a facilitated workshop at WInnComm 2015 where experts in this area can present studies to date, discuss any issues and challenges, and begin to establish best practices in this area moving forward.

2)      Security in Spectrum Sharing Systems. 

The Wireless Innovation Forum has published a report outlining a process that identifies potential threats and vulnerabilities and leads to the development of security policies at the organizational, system and individual platform level. These security policies specify the criteria and measures needed for protection and mitigation of designated threats throughout the entire lifetime of a system and its component elements. The process includes identification of assets which require protection, including but not limited to information, security operating parameters and data, embedded software, hardware components and virtually any infrastructure component including dispatch centers, servers, routers relays, base stations and individual radio platforms. Threat and vulnerability analyses must be tailored for each asset as is the risk assessment estimating the probability that any given threat/vulnerability may be realized. With this process completed specific security measures and mitigation methods can be developed which can be applied to the design, manufacture and operation of the system and its various component elements. The Forum will seek to host a facilitated workshop at WInnComm 2015 to begin the process of identify the security profile for spectrum sharing systems. Through this workshop, the members of the Forum will work with the broader community to catalog research completed to date in this area, to define gaps in development, and establish a roadmap for future development to be included in the Forum’s Top 10 list.

Session Agenda:

Workshop 5B
Thursday, 26 March, 10:30-12:00 (CSE 1202)

Spectrum Sharing and Critical Infrastructure Protection
Daniel Devasirvatham (Idaho National Laboratory, USA)
Spectrum sharing has become an area of great interest in future communications. It has been accelerated in the US by the President's directive to the US Government to share portions of its spectrum with the commercial world. The foundation for this was laid in the US by the PCAST (President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology) report. Similar efforts are being undertaken in Europe as well. An important understanding that has been developing recently is the idea that wireless is now an integral part of Critical Infrastructure (CI) and therefore, Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) by necessity requires the protection of vulnerabilities in Wireless Communications as well, especially those that can be used to disable key sectors in CI, such as nuclear, oil and gas power plants, refineries, Bridges, and dams. SCADA networks and more advanced forms of M2M communications are now integral to the operation and safety of CI. Spectrum sharing throws another twist into the mix. When some major incident happens, and hence, traffic volume goes up, congestion and delay could have deleterious consequences on the safe and stable operation or at least the optimum operation of the CI. In cases where there is significant damage to some element of CI, rerouting of functions (or power in the case of the smart grid) requires reliable and well understood traffic paths to execute protection and disconnection strategies. Spectrum sharing adds several unknowns and also vulnerabilities to this scenario. It could also provide additional ways in which someone wishing to do harm could magnify the effects of the incident by additional cyber-attacks via the links that provide the spectrum sharing. The paper examines some of these scenarios and discusses opportunities from and challenges to this approach. It should help heighten awareness of potential real world consequences which need to be taken into account as these systems are designed and deployed. Plans for implementing the concepts in a safe test bed are also discussed.

 

TV White Spaces in the UK: Update, and Focus on Aggregation of Resources
     Oliver Holland (Centre for Telecommunications Research, King’s College London, UK)

The UK regulator Ofcom has initiated a large-scale pilot of TV white space technology, based on its framework for white space access which is quite innovative in its approach. This framework is captured in the Harmonised European Standard ETSI EN 301 598. We are performing an extensive trial of TV white space technology within the Ofcom Pilot. This presentation overviews the UK's TV white space framework, and presents an update on the framework bearing in mind some recent developments and particularly Ofcom’s decision to approve the use of license-exempt white space devices. Moreover, this presentation gives some results from our trial, concentrating particularly on the aggregation of TV white space resources and what can be achieved by aggregation.

 

A key-free radio protocol for authentication and security of nodes and terminals in advanced RATs
          François Delaveau (Thales, France)

 

Workshop 6B
Thursday, 26 March, 14:00-15:30 (CSE 1202)

Synchronization of Low-Cost Distributed Spectrum Sensing Nodes for Multilateration-based Geolocation
Stefan Grönroos, Kristian Nybom and Jerker Björkqvist (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
In this work, we show how a distributed sensing network consisting of very low-cost nodes can also be used to locate radio transmitters without prior knowledge of which waveform is used. This information can aid in increasing location awareness among cognitive radios, as well as provide assistance in locating offending transmitters. The low accuracy of the internal clocks of these low-cost receivers as well as the geographical distribution of the nodes result in significant challenges regarding the synchronization of the receivers in order to position the source with adequate accuracy. In this paper, we synchronize the nodes to an arbitrary modulated RF signal, after which we calculate estimated time differences of arrival (TDOAs) to an unknown transmitter. We describe the implementation as well as give results on measurement accuracy in various scenarios using a prototype network of nodes spread out in the city of Turku, Finland.
 
The Three 'A's of Communications – Radar Spectrum Sharing
Michael Zatman (SAZE Technologies, USA)
The continuing need for Radio Frequency spectrum has led to an increasing interest in spectrum sharing between radar and communications systems. Sharing has been attempted in C-band (between radar and WiFi access points) and is proposed for S-Band. Meanwhile, DARPA's SSPARC program is developing new communications-radar spectrum sharing technologies. The presentation and paper present a taxonomy of the three classes of radar-communications spectrum sharing techniques; Avoid, Accept and Amalgamate – the three 'A's. The various schemes that have been proposed and/or are under development are mapped into the three classes. The three A's formulation is used to discuss the current status of radar-communications spectrum sharing, potential directions for future research, and provide context for radar-communications spectrum sharing business cases. It is shown that there are different business cases associated with each of the three 'A's.
 
Interference Control in the Coexistence of Radar and Communications Systems
Mohammed Hirzallah and Tamal Bose (University of Arizona, USA)
A (new method) is proposed to control the generated interference between coexistent MIMO radar and MIMO cellular base-station. This new method is based on a subspace expansion using the polynomial method. The polynomial method is more flexible in controlling generated interference compared to the previous methods mentioned in literature. This method, with some modifications can be used as a general control method in any MIMO based system. It is a useful tool to improve the ratio of generated interference to radar performance.
 
A Dynamic Spectrum Access on SDR for IEEE 802.15.4e networks
Rafik Zitouni (ECE Paris & Université de Paris Est, France); Laurent George (Ece Paris, France); Yassine Abouda (ENIT Tunis, Tunisia)
Our paper deals with a Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) and its implementation on a Software Defined Radio (SDR) for the IEEE 802.15.4e Networks. The network nodes select the carrier frequency after Energy-Detection based Spectrum Sensing (SS). To ensure frequency hoping between two nodes in IEEE 802.15.4e Network, we propose a synchronization algorithm. We consider that the IEEE 802.15.4e Network is Secondary User (SU), and all other networks are Primary Users (PUs) in unlicensed 868/915 MHz and 2450 MHz bands of a Cognitive Radio (CR). The algorithm and the energy-sensor are implemented over GNU Radio and Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) SDR. In addition, real packet transmissions is performed in two cases. In the first case, SU communicates with a static carrier-frequency, while in the second case with the implemented DSA. For each case, PU transmitter disturbs SU, which calculates Packet Success Rate (PSR) to measure the robustness of a used DSA. The obtained PSR is improved by 80% when the SU accomplished DSA rather than a static access.
 
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