IEEE 802.15.22.3 Spectrum Characterization and Occupancy Sensing Application Testbed

Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is becoming a key enabler for wireless communication technologies. Many DSA concepts-such as the Citizens Broadband Radio Service and TV White Space-rely on spectrum databases to identify available radio channels. However, propagation models and other assumptions used by these databases are usually poor for the given scenario, typically leading to over-conservative calculations in terms of permitted secondary spectrum access, geographical bounds or transmit powers in order to mitigate perceived interference risk. Spectrum sensing allows better understanding of the actual propagation and actual channel impulse response, allowing spectrum databases to tune their propagation models to increase the availability of spectrum for secondary access as assessed by such spectrum databases, or to increase the availability of local access licenses as assessed by the telecommunications regulator. A critical limitation on the uptake of ubiquitous sensing is that measurement systems are either proprietary or do not have commercial use-cases; hence little economy of scale exists to drive deployment. For this reason, the IEEE 802.15.22.3 Task Group was formed to standardize a Spectrum Characterization and Occupancy Sensing (SCOS) system capable of addressing a wide range of sensing tasks and be easily and flexibly deployed across a variety of hardware options. This paper provides a high-level description of this system and a first testbed implementing the standard in a laboratory-controlled environment. Preliminary performance assessments are also reported, where it is shown that the system is able to detect users with a power level down to -80 dBm with a probability of detection equal to 1 and controlled false alarm rates.