Data-Driven Spectrum Access Technologies for 6G

Abstract

The surge in global mobile traffic, driven by 5G adoption and emerging applications, necessitates new spectrum allocations for 6G systems. With most major swaths of spectrum below 15 GHz already allocated to other services, co-existence between cellular and incumbent services such as satellite or radar systems is critical to make such spectrum accessible for 6G. At the same time, the advent of artificial intelligence offers a new opportunity for designing more efficient spectrum sharing techniques. This paper presents four novel data-driven spectrum access techniques to enable efficient use of spectrum for the 6G era: 1) co-existence technique for efficient protection of fixed incumbent receivers within an established protection area; 2) data-driven approach for protecting satellite receivers via control of radiated power above the horizon; 3) spectrum sensing-based fast-time-scale physical resource block blanking; and 4) base station-based spectrum occupancy detection to enable fast-time-scale spectrum sharing with satellite and non-terrestrial network incumbents. These techniques leverage artificial intelligence and extreme multiple-input multiple-output capabilities to enable efficient spectrum co-existence/sharing while maintaining cellular network performance.