Dynamic Spectrum Access Enabled DoD Net-centric Spectrum Management

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is transforming its legacy spectrum management processes and capabilities to more effectively support mission-critical tactical communications and future net-centric military operations. This transformation envisions assured spectrum access by Warfighters anytime and anywhere, a prerequisite for the un-tethered, reliable, and ubiquitous wireless networking component of net-centric operations. Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) has emerged in recent years as a capability with the potential to effectively address spectrum access challenges by allowing more dynamic, flexible, and autonomous spectrum access. DSA is attained through wireless networking architectures and technologies that enable wireless devices to dynamically adapt their spectrum access according to criteria such as policy constraints, spectrum availability, propagation environment, and application performance requirements. The basic concept of DSA is that by exploiting the multiple dimensions of the spectrum resource and by enhancing distribution of spectrum data, systems will dynamically access and share in near-real time the spectrum resource among a large number of users, thus improving the utilization of spectrum. This paper will provide an overview of the DSA technologies, and present a DSA-enabled DoD spectrum management framework. The paper also will address critical issues related to technology maturity, regulatory and policy constraints, as well as industry standardization to support this framework.