WRITING BETWEEN THE LINES – THE STORY OF SPECTRUM AGGREGATION

Abstract

In order to meet the increasing demand for spectrum to support future DoD test and evaluation (T&E) requirements in an environment of decreasing spectrum availability, the DoD requires new spectrum aggregation and spectrum management technologies. Advanced radio technologies that sense and aggregate non-contiguous blocks of spectrum into a larger communication channel capable of supporting higher user data rates are needed. Moreover, the T&E community must more effectively manage and use the spectrum that is available to it, and utilize new paradigms in which spectrum is dynamically allocated on a non-interference basis to multiple, concurrent users and in a way that meets both planned and unplanned changes to mission requirements, and real time channel conditions, factoring in both Federal and non-Federal users of spectrum. The objective of the Adaptive Spectrum Aggregation and Management (ASAM) project is to develop technologies that will sense available spectrum, aggregate white space within fragmented frequency bands to create communication channels, and dynamically allocate those channels across multiple range users using algorithms that increase spectrum utilization and efficiency while applying policy constraints. The ASAM project is sponsored by the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC) and was awarded in 2016 through the National Spectrum Consortium. This paper will describe the ASAM project and technical challenges associated with its development.