Decision Analysis of Dynamic Spectrum Access Rules

A current trend in spectrum regulation is to incorporate spectrum sharing through the design of spectrum access rules that support Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA). This paper develops a decision- theoretic framework for regulators to assess the impacts of different spectrum access rules on both primary and secondary operators. We analyze access rules based on sensing and exclusion areas, which in practice can be enforced through geolocation databases. Our results show that receiver-only sensing provides insufficient protection for primary and co-existing secondary users and overall low social welfare. On the other hand, using combining sensing information of the transmitter and receiver of a communication link provides dramatic increases in system performance. The performance of using these link end points is relatively close to that of using many cooperative sensing nodes associated to the same access point and large link exclusion areas. These results are useful to regulators and network developers in understanding in developing rules for future DSA regulation.