Distributed Spectrum Sharing Using Blockchain: A Hyperledger Fabric Implementation

Abstract

Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) is proposed as a solution to the spectrum scarcity and under-utilization problem in a world of ever-increasing spectrum demand. Enabling DSS, however, requires overcoming many technical, regulatory, and economic challenges. Cognitive Radio (CR) provided a solution for some of the technical issues of DSS by equipping wireless devices with intelligent sensing and decision making capabilities to enable dynamic sharing of the surrounding spectrum between devices. However, CR alone has been unable to provide a fully dynamic ecosystem for spectrum sharing that guarantees protection for spectrum owners. This has led multiple spectrum regulators to implement frameworks that enable DSS through a centralized spectrum management system that complements the CR capabilities to ensure compliance with spectrum access policies and regulations. However, these frameworks require trusting a third party to manage spectrum access and do not provide intrinsic mechanisms to incentives spectrum owners to share their spectrum. Blockchain technology provides a distributed platform for autonomous asset trading that can be utilized to implement a fully dynamic spectrum sharing system, ensuring transparency and trust between devices without the need for a third party. This paper provides a blockchain-based model for a DSS that represents spectrum access rights as tokenized assets and enables trading of these spectrum tokens between multiple users on a distributed ledger using smart contracts. The proposed model is implemented using Hyperledger Fabric (HLF) as a permissioned blockchain network and the details of the implemented Chaincode transactions are outlined.