Sharing and Reusing Wireless Spectrum in a World of Regulators and Incumbents

NOTE: This talk will be held in LT1.

There is building excitement in the wireless research community over software defined radios (SDRs). In short, SDRs transform radios from devices hardwired to use a particular piece of radio spectrum to support a particular application (e.g. television delivery or cellphone use), to devices capable of adapting their behavior to use whatever part of the spectrum is available, and running whatever application the radio's user currently wishes to run.

From a computer science perspective, SDRs are a transforming idea. From a practical perspective, they are a challenge -- because SDRs don't fit the current regulatory and economic models, where portions of the spectrum are assigned to particular applications and are owned or assigned to specific users or service providers.

In this talk I discuss an approach to the practical problems. The core goals are to make SDRs safe, in the sense that they don't violate any regulations about spectrum use, and to create an economic incentive for incumbents to allow SDRs to operate in their spectrum. I will discuss our approach using a logic engine that understands regulatory policies and the radio's capabilities and determines what transmission patterns are permitted.

BIO: Dr. Craig Partridge is chief scientist for internetworking at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He is best known for work designing how Internet email is routed, and developing multi-gigabit routers. A former editor-in-chief of ACM Computer Communication Review and IEEE Network Magazine, he's a fellow of both IEEE and ACM.