A New Shared Spectrum Access Paradigm between Cellular Wireless Communications and Radio Astronomy

Abstract

This paper proposes a new paradigm of shared spectrum access between cellular wireless communications (CWC) and radio astronomy systems (RAS). Traditionally, most spectrum chunks are separately allocated to CWC and RAS, with a few shared spectrum without guaranteed spectrum access for RAS. Furthermore, RAS sites are generally set up at remote locations, protected by radio quiet zones. In view of growths in spectrum demands from both systems, in population, and in applications and service deployments, the existing paradigm of geographical and spectral isolation between CWC and RAS will become inefficient. This paper develops a three phase spectrum access which enables geographical and spectral coexistence between CWC and RAS. Additionally, traffic statistics based improved spectrum access is developed. Furthermore, a built-in fine tuning mechanism is presented for addressing mismatches between design and practical environments as well as for facilitating service evolutions. Performance evaluation results demonstrate advantages of the proposed paradigm.