Nascor: Network Assisted Spectrum Coordination Service For Coexistence Between Heterogeneous Radio Systems

This paper presents the design and proof-of-concept validation of a novel network-assisted spectrum coordination (NASCOR) service for improved radio coexistence in future shared spectrum bands. The basic idea is to create an overlay network service for dissemination of spectrum usage information between otherwise independent radio devices and systems, enabling them to implement decentralized spectrum coexistence policies that reduce interference and improve spectrum packing efficiency. The proposed method is applicable to unlicensed band and shared spectrum systems in general (including femtocells), but is particularly relevant to emerging TV white spaces and cognitive radio systems which are still in need of scalable and accurate solutions for both primary-to-secondary and secondary-to-secondary coordination. Key challenges in enabling a network layer spectrum coordination service are discussed along with the description of our system architecture and a detailed case-study for a specific example of spectrum coordination: client-AP association optimization in dense networks. Performance gains are evaluated through large-scale simulations with multiple overlapping networks, each consisting of 15-35 access points and 50-250 clients in a 0.5 x 0.5 sq.km. urban setting. Results show an average of 150% improvement in random deployments and upto 7x improvements in clustered deployments for the least-performing client throughputs with modest reductions in the mean client throughputs.