Crime and Punishment for Cognitive Radios

Frequency-agile radios hold the potential for improving spectrum utilization by allowing wireless systems to dynamically adapt their spectral footprint based on local conditions. Whether this is done using market mechanisms or opportunistic approaches, the gains result from shifting some responsibility for avoiding harmful interference from the static ldquoregulatory layer" to layers that can adapt at runtime. However, this leaves open the major problem of how to enforce/incentivize compliance and what the structure of ldquolight-handed" regulation should be. This paper addresses this question by developing a model for the incentives associated with cheating and for the tradeoffs between different elements of an enforcement structure which will effectively deter cheating. It then investigates a code-based scheme for detecting and assigning liability to culprits.