Gray-Space Spectrum Sharing between Multiple Rotating Radars and Cellular Network Hotspots

This paper considers gray-space spectrum sharing when rotating radars are primary spectrum users, and multiple cells from one or more cellular networks are secondary users. A cellular network may share spectrum to supplement its dedicated spectrum, or provide a broadband hotspot service. A secondary device is allowed to transmit as long as cumulative interference is not harmful to nearby radars, probably because no radar is pointing its directional antenna at the device at this moment. This paper presents mechanisms that would support such sharing, and quantifies performance when spectrum is considered 100% utilized under traditional spectrum management. It is shown that the sharing allows cells to sustain significant mean data rates. For example, if 5% of a cellular network´s cells need more capacity than dedicated spectrum can provide, a cell can get almost 1.2 bps/Hz on average from shared spectrum. By evaluating quality of service, it is found that shared spectrum could be used efficiently for applications such as non-interactive video streaming, peer-to-peer file sharing, large file transfers, and web browsing, but not for applications such as real-time transfers of small files, and VoIP.