Pervasive spectrum sharing for public safety communications

Next-generation public safety communications (PSC) systems must sustain high-speed, ultra reliable wireless data transmissions. Moving toward this next generation of PSCs warrants a new perspective of increased heterogeneity in emerging wireless architectures and increased multiplexing of wireless spectrum. To realize this vision, models that incentivize users to opportunistically share their spectrum as substrates over possibly multiple hops, and decentralized and open techniques that seamlessly exploit these substrates for public safety applications are much needed. The value of such multihop and multi-technology pervasive spectrum sharing (PSS) is more pronounced for application scenarios in which the need for spectrum access is vital, and infrastructure-less operation is necessary. This article introduces PSS as a new architecture where sharing is the norm, and outlines its vision, principles, and technical challenges.