TY - JOUR
T1 - On the application of blockchains to spectrum management
AU - Weiss, Martin B.H.
AU - Werbach, Kevin
AU - Sicker, Douglas C.
AU - Bastidas, Carlos E.Caicedo
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received August 17, 2018; revised February 5, 2019 and April 22, 2019; accepted April 23, 2019. Date of publication April 30, 2019; date of current version June 7, 2019. This research was supported in part by NSF Grants 1443796, 1642949. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was M. Zorzi. (Corresponding author: Martin B. H. Weiss.) M. B. H. Weiss is with the School of Computing and Information, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA (e-mail: mbw@pitt.edu).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
PY - 2019/6
Y1 - 2019/6
N2 - Spectrum sharing mechanisms have evolved to meet different needs related to increasing spectrum use efficiency. At first, decentralized and opportunistic cognitive radios (and cognitive radio networks) were the primary focus of research for these mechanisms. This gradually transitioned toward the development of cooperative sharing methods based on databases, typified by TV white spaces databases. Spectrum sharing is now the basis for the dynamic and fine-grained spectrum rights regime for the citizen's band radio service (CBRS) as well as for license shared access (LSA). The emergence of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has stimulated interest in applying its underlying technology, blockchain, to other applications as well, such as securities trading and supply chain management. This paper explores the application of blockchain to radio spectrum management. While blockchains could underlie radio spectrum management more broadly, we will focus on dynamic spectrum sharing applications. Like the cooperative approaches currently in use, blockchain is a database technology. However, a blockchain is a decentralized database in which the owner of the data maintains control. We consider the benefits and limitations of blockchain solutions in general, and then examine their potential application to four major categories of spectrum sharing.
AB - Spectrum sharing mechanisms have evolved to meet different needs related to increasing spectrum use efficiency. At first, decentralized and opportunistic cognitive radios (and cognitive radio networks) were the primary focus of research for these mechanisms. This gradually transitioned toward the development of cooperative sharing methods based on databases, typified by TV white spaces databases. Spectrum sharing is now the basis for the dynamic and fine-grained spectrum rights regime for the citizen's band radio service (CBRS) as well as for license shared access (LSA). The emergence of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin has stimulated interest in applying its underlying technology, blockchain, to other applications as well, such as securities trading and supply chain management. This paper explores the application of blockchain to radio spectrum management. While blockchains could underlie radio spectrum management more broadly, we will focus on dynamic spectrum sharing applications. Like the cooperative approaches currently in use, blockchain is a database technology. However, a blockchain is a decentralized database in which the owner of the data maintains control. We consider the benefits and limitations of blockchain solutions in general, and then examine their potential application to four major categories of spectrum sharing.
KW - Blockchain
KW - radio spectrum management
KW - radio spectrum sharing
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U2 - 10.1109/TCCN.2019.2914052
DO - 10.1109/TCCN.2019.2914052
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067012564
SN - 2332-7731
VL - 5
SP - 193
EP - 205
JO - IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking
JF - IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking
IS - 2
M1 - 8703084
ER -