The Evolution of Spectrum Management: A Technical Framework for DSA Management

In this paper, we examine the current spectrum management process and propose modifications to accommodate new dynamic spectrum access (DSA) techniques. As a case study, we use the Joint Spectrum Center (JSC) Spectrum XXI system for current spectrum management process. Our proposed new technical framework examines the following key areas: DSA technology, wireless network planning: infrastructure-based and ad hoc, policy based reasoning, cognitive awareness and information sharing. We show that current static deployment allocations are very ineffective for addressing DSA-enable technology. In addition, pure contention-based allocations are not the solution for larger networks. Moreover, we show that DSA management will consist of a hybrid of pre-planned resource allocation along with resource sharing techniques. Finally, we show that other parameters such as time/pseudo-random codes/spatial resources, deployment size, and traffic types must be considered in addition to tradition frequency resources in the spectrum management process.