Facilitating Spectrum Sharing With Passive Satellite Incumbents

Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks will facilitate seamless user experiences across a variety of 6G applications. The deployment of these networks will necessitate new approaches to spectrum allocation. Spectrum access by passive microwave sensors for earth-based and space-based scientific applications represents a spectrum use application having unique attributes that motivate consideration of spectrum sharing between these “incumbents” and commercial users to ensure the most efficient utilization of available frequencies across applications. Toward this end, we propose an economic framework where incumbents have priority use, with a primary and secondary commercial tier underneath. For commercial users, the option to join the primary tier is based on a model of short term post-paid leases of spectrum, while the secondary tier is available to join at no cost. Using a joint game-theoretic and queuing-theoretic model, we find that for practical parameters the revenue maximizing equilibrium is: 1) stable in the Evolutionary Stable Strategy sense; 2) associated with the maximum priority upgrade fee customers are willing to pay; 3) associated with an equilibrium where all customers wish to join the priority class; and 4) socially optimal. We validate our findings leveraging trace data from satellite radiometers operating in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts.