Weekly Seminar: “Spectrum Sharing: Scenarios and Opportunities”

ABSTRACT:

This talk will present an overview of current research that thematically centers around Spectrum Sharing – a topic whose importance has been ratcheted by the Jun 2010 U.S. Presidential Memorandum (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/presidential-memorandum-unleashing-wireless-broadband-revolution) to “make available a total of 500 MHz of Federal and nonfederal spectrum over the next 10 years, suitable for both mobile and fixed wireless broadband use”.  The first down payment on the above is the current AWS-3 transition (https://www.ntia.doc.gov/category/aws-3-transition) of 50 MHz of spectrum that will require spectral coordination between numerous Federal incumbents (radar, navigation etc.) and cellular operator networks (notably, 4G LTE and WiFi).

Spectrum Mapping using Wide Area RF Software Defined Radio/Sensors

The need for more efficient spectrum use has led to notion of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) whereby secondary (unlicensed) users are permitted to use some bands on a `non-interfering’ basis with the primary (licensed) users (e.g. TV White Spaces). This in turn has resulted in database centric architectural solutions (to ensure the desired protection to the licensed incumbent) with the recognition that wide-area distributed spectrum sensing using fixed (and in future mobile crowdsourced) spectrum sensors could be an integral component of such systems. The talk will describe recent work on developing low-cost distributed spectrum monitoring infrastructure.

        Link Layer Enablers for Spectral Co-existence: Radar/Wi-Fi & LTE

Effective spectrum sharing will rely on new ideas and effective tools for modeling and analysis of spectral co-existence between dis-similar systems. UW team has developed a suite of analytical and simulation approaches to explore co-existence between co-located Federal (e.g various types of radars) and civilian communication systems, at both the link and network levels.  These include, necessarily balancing two conflicting goals: ensuring that the cumulative impact of civilian communication technologies (such as cellular LTE and WiFi networks) fall within incumbent protection guidelines as required, while simultaneously quantifying the impact of radar interference on such network throughput. This part of the talk will describe some recent results on link layer co-existence mechanisms between a search radar and Wi-Fi networks.

SPEAKER:

Sumit Roy received the B. Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) in 1983, and the M. S. and Ph. D. degrees from the University of California (Santa Barbara), all in Electrical Engineering in 1985 and 1988 respectively, as well as an M. A. in Statistics and Applied Probability in 1988. Presently he is Integrated Systems Professor of Electrical Engineering, Univ. of Washington where his research interests include fundamental analysis/design of wireless communication and sensor network systems spanning a diversity of technologies and system application areas: next-gen wireless LANs and beyond 4G cellular networks, heterogeneous network coexistence, spectrum sharing, white space networking and software defined radio platforms, vehicular and underwater networks, smart grids and RFID sensor networking.

He spent 2001-03 on academic leave at Intel Wireless Technology Lab as a Senior Researcher engaged in systems architecture and standards development for ultra-wideband systems (Wireless PANs) and next generation high-speed wireless LANs. Among other distinctions, he was Science Foundation of Ireland’s E.T.S.  Walton   Awardee for a sabbatical at University College, Dublin (Jan-July 2008), was the recipient of a Royal Acad. Engineering (UK) Distinguished Visiting Fellowship (summer 2011), served as Visiting Research Scientist at Microsoft Research, Bangalore, India (8 weeks, Aug. 2014-Jan. 2015), an Erskine Fellow at Univ. of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (6 weeks, Mar.-Apr. 2015) and a High-End Visiting Expert for Shanghai JiaoTung University (2015-present). His activities for the IEEE Communications Society (CommSoc) includes membership of several technical and conference program committees, notably the Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks.  He currently serves as CommSoc Distinguished Lecturer and was elevated to IEEE Fellow by Communications Society in 2007 for “contributions to multi-user communications theory and cross-layer design of wireless networking standards”.