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Achieving Innovative and Reliable Services in Unlicensed Spectrum
Funded by
National Science Foundation
Grant ITR-020581.
Collaborative project
together with the
WINLAB
at Rutgers University and
Eric Friedman
at Cornell University. Project work started in September 2002
and is expected to be completed by August 2005. This website
will be used to communicate results of the project, working
papers, as well as events related to it.
Background
and objectives
The
establishment of unlicensed communication bands has
successfully encouraged innovation, most recently in wireless
devices and infrastructure that use unlicensed spectrum to
provide connections to the Internet. A key aspect of Internet
usage is an almost unlimited capacity for growth. While the
overload of any finite band may be inevitable, the goals of
this project are to increase the capacity of the available
unlicensed bands as much as possible, and to develop
approaches that can predict overloads and prevent sudden,
unexpected failure modes.
For
unlicensed wireless, the transition from 11 Mb/s 802.11b to 54
Mb/s 802.11a marks the start of an industry race toward
ever-higher data rates. These high rate internet services will
need to coexist with the emergence of wide variety of wireless
devices, ranging from low bit rate sensors to high resolution
full motion video cameras. The combination of increasing data
rates and the proliferation of devices could easily lead to
inefficiency in the use of unlicensed spectrum due to a
combination of overuse and failure to develop mechanisms for
efficient sharing of this resource.
Approach
We seek to
promote efficient use of unlicensed spectrum by combining an
engineering and technology perspective with insights from the
literatures on regulation, property rights, and economic
coordination. The team includes researchers with expertise in
property rights, networking fairness, and wireless
communications and network engineering. This team is
developing a general framework for understanding cooperation
in unlicensed band wireless networks by studying the following
issues:
- Property
rights as applied to spectrum management
- Protocols
for collaboration between technology neutral wireless
devices
- Pricing
mechanisms for efficient and fair sharing of congested
unlicensed spectrum
-
Radio-level interference avoidance techniques
The above
problems are being studied with a combination of formal and
conceptual analysis, simulation and experimental methods,
including a dynamic spectrum management testbed which
implements potential collaboration protocols and cooperation
models. The goal is to preserve the “creative chaos” of the
unlicensed bands while creating a degree of long term
stability and predictability that is appropriate to the size
of the investments being made and the strategic importance of
these uses to the nation. Results from the project are
expected to be of value to both policy makers and emerging
unlicensed band wireless Internet providers as well as
wireless technologists.
MSU contribution
and work so far
The MSU
research team, led by Johannes M. Bauer and Steven S. Wildman
will focus on the following issues:
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Review the existing uses of unlicensed
spectrum and the experience with non-traditional models of
spectrum management.
-
Formulation of a theoretical framework to
analyze the nexus between specification of property rights,
and the efficiency of unlicensed spectrum utilization.
Modeling of property rights
regimes that differ with respect to provisions regarding
access and use, management, exclusion, alienation, and
enforcement.
Identification of alternative
property rights specifications for unlicensed spectrum that
maintain the characteristics of common property yet overcome
the inefficiencies associated with fully open access.
Development of a systematic
comparative evaluation of the range of design options with
respect to a set of technical and economic criteria:
efficiency of spectrum use, economic efficiency given the
state of technology, investment and innovation, pricing
strategies to promote efficient and fair allocations,
network layer protocols, physical layer algorithms.
Work in progress
Bauer,
J. M.
“A comparative analysis of spectrum management regimes,” paper
presented at the 30th Communications and Internet
Research Conference, Alexandria, VA, September 28-30, 2002
Bauer, J. M. "Spectrum
management and the mobile services industry," paper
presented at the 53rd Annual Conference of the International
Communications Association, San Diego, CA, May 23-26, 2003.
Ting, Carol, Bauer, Johannes M.
& Wildman, Steven S.
The U.S. experience with non-traditional
approaches to spectrum management: Tragedies of the commons and
other myths reconsidered.
August 31, 2003.
Contacts
Johannes M. Bauer,
phone +1-517-432-8003, e-mail <bauerj@msu.edu>
Steven S. Wildman,
phone +1-517-432-8004, e-mail <swildman@msu.edu>
Last updated September 11,
2003.
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