Comparison of Centralized and Distributed Spectrum Monitoring Methods for Enabling Spectrum Sharing Between Weather Satellites and Terrestrial Networks

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Today, the U.S. government possesses almost 60 percent of radio spectrum, notably the majority of the government owned spectrum is within the valuable 300 MHz to 3 GHz band. This accounts for more than half—(i.e.1500 MHz) of the useful spectrum for terrestrial wireless and mobile communications. Consequently, spectrum sharing between government and commercial entities is a necessity to enhance efficiency in spectrum use. One of the major challenges of spectrum sharing is establishing a mutually beneficial policy that enables the government incumbent to symbiotically share spectrum such that the incumbents’ core capabilities and missions are protected. Given spectrum sharing is a burgeoning practice, our observations and efforts will provide guidance for future development of spectrum sharing and policy making. In this work we analyze the use of a monitoring system to enable spectrum sharing. The monitoring system is used to detect, classify, and identify the source of the interference within the shared spectrum. Then the system is required to provide sufficient information to the offending entity such that they can mitigate the interference. We compare two approaches to monitoring system design: central monitoring approach and distributed monitoring approach.