A cloud-based approach to spectrum monitoring

Thousands of wireless communication systems have been fielded, with hundreds more under development. The RF spectrum has growing economic value to consumers, businesses, and governments worldwide. This has generated such a demand for wireless bandwidth that spectrum allocation, the existing primary method of spectrum management, is becoming increasingly inadequate. In this paper, we briefly summarize the response to the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Agency's Notice of Inquiry concerning a Spectrum Monitoring Pilot Program and present a cloud-based system-of-systems for spectrum monitoring based on the response to the Inquiry. We describe the interface to the cloud as an important enabler and propose a solution that allows ontology descriptions to be used for both spectrum management and monitoring. These ontology descriptions support the use of semantic techniques such as queries, responses, and reasoning.