Dynamic Spectrum Access: Current state of the art and future challenges

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is emerging as a promising technology to mitigate the spectrum scarcity caused by static frequency allocations. Despite the clear need for more efficient allocation, however, DSA faces a number of challenges, chief among them being the perceived risk of interference to incumbent systems. In this paper, we present an overview of DSA technology, including the current state of research and applications. We then recommend areas of focus that would address the challenges. They include the need for quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees, associated metrics, and prototype implementations that demonstrate and validate the predicted benefits.