Dynamic spectrum access models: toward an engineering perspective in the spectrum debate

Until recently, the proponents of spectrum commons and the proponents of spectrum property rights had settled, like the armies of the Marne, into their entrenched positions, emerging only to launch periodic and unproductive attacks across a semantic and philosophical no man's land. Recently, however, there have been calls to move beyond these entrenched positions, by developing pragmatic models and solutions that capture some of the benefits of each philosophical position. In this article we cautiously enter that no man's land with two illustrative dynamic spectrum access models. While both of our models retain a bias toward usage of spectrum resources based on a spectrum property rights approach, they also promote dynamic access and short-term dedication of spectrum resources. We call these models dynamic property rights spectrum access (D-Pass) and dynamic commons property rights spectrum access (D-CPass). In this work we focus primarily on engineering issues, proposing the use of a spectrum policy server as a clearinghouse and specifying the spectrum access mechanisms relevant to each model. To demonstrate the useful studies enabled through these models, we present illustrative results via the bandwidth utilization achieved under each model. Our results indicate that both the spectrum access mechanism and market forces will play important roles in determining the resulting bandwidth utilization.