CORLAB

Description:

The wireless access, use and traffic demand are on a fast rise, leading to an increased demand for radio spectrum. Besides performance reasons, the efficient spectrum utilization is imperative from an economic point of view. The cognitive radio technology empowers networked devices with new degrees of flexibility, enabling new network architectures, access methods, and services, enriching the roles of service providers, and opening new opportunities for businesses cases. Until recently, the main spectrum market was the one of traditional cellular-based providers with AP deployments and long-term licenses to fixed predetermined channels with exclusive access rights. However now new spectrum market paradigms, such as various types of secondary spectrum, “local spot” and “open” spectrum markets, arise. Traditionally cellular wireless networks are managed by operators, which offer services to users via long-term subscriptions and pre-paid cards that enable them to associate with a certain operator to access the spectrum. Recently, we proposed a novel service, namely, the “flexi-card”: A flexi-card client is not associated with a specific operator but can dynamically access BS of different operators on a per-call basis. We showed that the flexi-card in a cellular market becomes a catalyst, providing significant benefits, compared to traditional markets with only subscribers. For example, the analysis demonstrated that a duopoly that offers the flexi-card in addition to subscriptions alleviates the market exclusion effects, dramatically reduces the percentage of disconnected users, decreases substantially the blocking probabilities, and improves the social welfare! In these new spectrum markets, owners could deploy services or rent/lease spectrum assets. Unlike the traditional cellular-based markets, these spectrum markets have larger sizes, are more heterogeneous, and potentially can offer an improved set of services (e.g., higher multiplexing gains and a reduction of costs due to the higher utilization of existing infrastructure). Business-driven comparative analysis studies of the evolution of spectrum markets based on different spectrum access/sharing paradigms are crucial in assessing the benefits of CRNs and further accelerating the technology transfer. The main objective of this research is to set the foundations for the development of a modular modeling framework and simulation platform that enables the business-driven comparative analysis study of various spectrum markets and services.