Satellite Assisted Spectrum Agility Concept

Abstract

The proliferation of wireless technologies has created a new dimension in the spectrum domain; mainly spectrum management and utilization. Because of the excessive demand for the radio spectrum, frequency bands are allocated not for just an application but for a variety of applications. Nevertheless, there still seems to be spectrum scarcity. Per contra, the research studies have shown that the spectrum utilization is very low in some certain bands, which leads to the conclusion that there is a problem with spectrum management and allocation not the spectrum itself. Thus, to combat the overcrowding and inefficient spectrum usage, the ideas on a more "clever" spectrum usage have led to the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) concepts. Moreover, the interoperability of the devices using a variety of access technologies is another driving force for more clever radios. The automatic upload and reconfiguration of the radio devices rather than hardware-based reconfiguration is essential especially in emergency communications. The so-called "smart radios" aim to address all these issues. In this paper, we propose a satellite assisted smart radio network architecture where spectrum allocation is done by the satellite depending on the information fed by the smart base stations.