Hierarchical Game Theoretic Design of Frequency Assignment and Channel Selection for General Authorized Accesses

Abstract

General Authorized Access (GAA) is a registration-based spectrum access authorization and is the bottom tier in FCC's 3-tiered regulatory framework of spectrum sharing. A Spectrum Access System (SAS) manages shared accesses to raise spectrum utilization and meet heterogeneous demands. In managing GAA, a SAS announces spectrum availability and coordinate spectrum accesses by various wireless networks. Based on spectrum availability, the operator of each wireless network submits to SAS a channel selection (CS) plan that maximizes the total capacity for users. Knowing their channel selection plans, the SAS then makes frequency assignments (FA) to individual operators to maximize total capacity of shared accesses while complying with interference management requirements among tiers. This paper formulates FA and CS as a leader-follower game and presents a novel design for SAS to coordinate GAA among operators by exploiting the game theoretic solution concept.