The combination of exclusive use spectrum licensing and growing demand

for voice, data, and video applications is leading to artificial

spectrum scarcity. A recent approach to alleviate this

artificial spectrum scarcity innovatively uses unused TV

spectrum, also called the TV white spaces, through dynamic spectrum

access (DSA) techniques. Wireless devices can use DSA techniques such

as sensing and geo-location databases to learn about available TV

channels for wireless communication. One obvious question to ask is

whether the technology enabler for white space networking,

i.e. dynamic spectrum access, is viable in other portions of the

spectrum?

This paper extends our research on networking devices in TV white

spaces over the last seven years to other licensed spectrum bands

between 30 MHz and 6 GHz. Typically, the goodness of licensed

spectrum bands is measured using spectrum occupancy as a goodness

metric, but the DSA opportunities in different bands can depend on

several factors. We propose a novel DSA goodness metric to compare the

opportunity of capitalizing on available spectrum using DSA techniques in

various licensed bands. Further, we use these metrics to evaluate the

data from the ongoing spectrum measurement campaign at Microsoft

Research over one year.

PDF file

In  50th Allerton Conference on Communication, Control and Computing

Publisher  IEEE

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