SARA: A Practical Framework for Quantitative Risk Assessment Applied to Federal/Commercial Spectrum Coexistence

• Main Authors: Tchakountio, Fabrice, Lewis, Ambrose, Kompella, Sastry
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Electromagnetic interference; Government; interference; Military communication; quantitative risk assessment; Real-time systems; spectrum management; spectrum sharing; System performance; Taxonomy; Uncertainty
• ISSN: 2155-7586
• DOI: 10.1109/MILCOM55135.2022.10017962

Spectrum sharing and coexistence of Spectrum Dependent Systems (SDS) has been a topic of high interest for the past two decades. A unifying principle among the various directed and dynamic spectrum access approaches is the effect that uncertainty has on system performance. Risk, uncertainty, and performance are inseparably tied together. We naturally desire high performance (e.g., user capacity and density) coupled with a low risk of interference and a high level of coexistence between SDS networks. There is an inherent need to optimize spectrum utilization dynamically and efficiently between and among diverse commercial and government SDS networks. This includes supporting a wide range of distributed, decentralized, and centralized SDS architectures and management approaches. While the basic technical challenges associated with dynamic spectrum sharing have largely been overcome, these systems typically do not focus on developing mechanisms to make realistic assessment of performance and interference risks. Our paper introduces the topic of Spectrum Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), in the context of RF interference mitigation and spectrum coexistence between and among commercial and government SDS networks. Spectrum QRA provides an approach to identify, assess, and reduce systemic risk in SDSs, both initially during planning stages, as well as in an online manner during field operations. Section I introduces the problem while section II covers related work. Section III embarks in the description of our Spectrum QRA framework, including a taxonomy of spectrum access risks inherent to a variety of SDSs. A generic architecture, centered around a QRA-based planning server, is introduced to assist in the planning of spectrum access before deployment and during real-time operations. Section IV describes a simulation environment for Spectrum QRA and discusses preliminary experimental results. Section V summarizes the key findings and elaborates on future Spectrum QRA research.