Spectrum Measurement Markets for Tiered Spectrum Access

The recent framework for tiered spectrum sharing in the 3.5 GHz band establishes rules in which multiple firms called Environment Sensing Capability operators (ESCs) may measure spectrum occupancy and sell these measurements to other firms to help facilitate spectrum access. Motived by this we consider a scenario in which two spectrum access firms (SAs) seeks to access a shared band of spectrum and must in turn purchase spectrum measurements from one of two ESCs. Given the measurements they purchase, the SA firms then compete on price to serve customers in a shared band of spectrum. We study how differences in the quality and price of the spectrum measurements impact the resulting market equilibrium between the SAs and find that having different qualities of measurements available to different SAs can lead to better economic welfare.