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’:’ i) stable in the Evolutionary Stable Strategy sense; ii) associated with the maximum priority upgrade fee customers are willing to pay; iii) associated with an equilibrium where all customers wish to join the priority class; and iv) socially optimal. We validate our findings leveraging trace data from satellite radiometers operating in the vicinity of Boston, Massachusetts.