TPRC 2024: The 52nd Research Conference on Communications, Information and Inter

Link to paper

Abstract:
Defining property rights in the electromagnetic spectrum is challenging because the natural laws governing the behavior of electromagnetic radiations are very different from those describing material resources like land, water, or air. Additionally, the rules for the composition and decomposition of spectrum licenses, thus created for trading in secondary markets, are difficult to derive and are generally not well understood.

In this paper, we employ the framework of dynamical systems theory to introduce a new theoretical model that captures the behavior of a radio service as a dynamical system that operates within a context of concurrently operating radio services. We then introduce the formal framework of assume-guarantee contracts for specifying spectrum operating rights allocated to each radio service. Our proposed model helps unify existing frameworks that rely on an environment-based specification of transmission permissions and reception protections. Our framework is in accordance with the FCC's 2023 Policy Statement that establishes spectrum management principles for transmitters and receivers.

Our work opens up an inter-disciplinary research program between the fields of spectrum management, robotics, control-theory and programming language theory. We illustrate the applicability of our framework with a simple two-system example focusing on FCC's recent 5G-vs-radio altimeter problem.