Extending IEEE 802.11 by DARPA XG Spectrum Management: A Feasibility Study

Increasing the spectral efficiency by opportunistic spectrum sharing among radios is the very recent research topic in the field of wireless communication. According to the report of SPTF about unused spectrum bands, the DARPA is investigating on opportunistic use of these unused bands in its XG communication program. In this paper, some options to use XG approach for the wireless systems, for example, for IEEE 802.11 or wireless local area network (WLAN) are shown. Different policy based XG parameters and respective 802.11 tunable parameters have been determined and the mapping among those parameters has been shown/analyzed. An extended structural model of the 802.11 radio system with DARPA XG communication is depicted with the help of policy and system conformance blocks and sensor. It can be concluded that, proper mapping of XG policies to abstract behaviors and controlling the radio according to polices, could increase the spectrum sharing opportunities and hence the spectral efficiency, for example, the throughput of the system.