EARS: Collaborative Research: Spectrum Sensing for Coexistence of Active and Passive Radio Services

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This EARS (Enhancing Access to the Radio Spectrum) program was founded in response to the 2010 Presidential Memorandum on Unleashing the Wireless Broadband Revolution mandated by Congress as part of the National Broadband Plan. It was referenced in 2010 State of the Union and later on the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (More than 1/3 of the bill deals with radio spectrum), the PCAST 2012 Report [President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology] (which calls for vastly increased use of spectrum sharing) and the 2013 Presidential memo (Expanding America's Leadership in Wireless Innovation). The aim of this program is to identify bold new concepts with the potential to contribute to significant improvements in the efficiency of radio spectrum utilization, protection of passive sensing services, and in the ability for traditionally underserved Americans to benefit from current and future wireless-enabled goods and services. The impact is large on the economics of the Nation as seen on the last FCC bidding of 65MHz of the spectrum for over $45 billion early in 2015. It will enable access to science, engineering, industry, civilian and military users of the RF spectrum.Effective use of radio spectrum is coveted by both active services (e.g., cellular, radar, wireless internet) and passive services (e.g., radio astronomy service (RAS) and earth exploration satellite service (EESS)). It has led to an increasing tension between the growing demand for greater spectrum use by active radios and the pressing need for quiet spectrum by passive systems. The first and foremost step towards alleviating this tension is to monitor the radio frequency environment at high resolution in time, space, frequency, and even some appropriately defined feature space. Although the spectrum monitoring issue has undergone extensive research and radio frequency interference (RFI) detection has been fervently investigated in the remote sensing communities, only limited efforts exist in examining spectrum monitoring from the perspectives of both active and passive systems to conscientiously support coexistence. To support peaceful coexistence on radio spectrum, this project aims to develop efficient spectrum monitoring techniques that provide deep understanding and technological enablers for future spectrum management in the growing presence of active and passive radio services. Advanced signal processing techniques will be developed to provide high-resolution spectrum sensing at short sensing time, and optimal sensing resource allocation schemes will be investigated to maximize the payoffs of the sensing budget. The proposed research on spectrum sensing will inform and advance the RFI detection and management in support of increased societal and scientific returns from RAS and EESS investments. The developed techniques can also be leveraged by cognitive radio networks for dynamic spectrum sharing, impacting practices of the services like cellular data and Internet of things (IoT). Graduate and undergraduate students will benefit from the unique interdisciplinary nature of this research, especially through interactions with the scientists at the Arecibo Observatory, and the hands-on experience with its 305 m telescope.