Spectrum Measurement

This applied research thrust addresses the challenge of designing wideband low-cost measurement infrastructure for generating necessary data on spectrum use and for introducing an added degree of accountability to spectrum users. Designing a scalable system to efficiently measure spectrum over a large area is a challenging task. Such capability, however, is a key component of advanced wireless networking infrastructure of the future for multiple reasons. First, as we move towards spectrum sharing architectures, it is important to understand how spectrum is being utilized across different regions of interest. Second, as spectrum sharing becomes more prevalent, it is particularly important to implement mechanisms that detect spectrum violations, which in turn requires near-continuous monitoring of spectrum activity for wide areas. Third, in the context of experimental infrastructures, such as PAWR platforms, the ability to measure and understand spectrum utilization at a large scale is an important component to system operations and management. Overall, this motivates the need to design an efficient spectrum monitoring system – one that potentially is cost-effective and operates over a large area and provides an efficient way to collect, analyze, and inform on all spectrum use related metrics.