SSC pioneered and continues to lead the development of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technology. DSA technology enables radio devices to dramatically improve spectrum utilization, communications reliability and network deployment time. SSC’s technology employs a policy-based sensing approach to DSA. Devices using this solution continually assess the radio spectrum environment, and automatically and swiftly adjust frequencies in response to changing RF conditions. Policies that control the operation of devices are maintained in a database and pushed out to DSA-enabled devices, ensuring that they operate in accordance with regulatory, service provider and other stakeholder requirements. DSA makes wireless networks frequency agile – empowering devices at the edge with the ability to efficiently and effectively access available spectrum.
How Does it Work?
DSA technology enables radios to safely share multiple frequency bands without interfering with legacy and other protected wireless systems. DSA-enabled devices accomplish this through a novel combination of RF, signal processing, networking and detection technologies that are coupled with DSA software algorithms to provide substantially more communications capacity than is available through current static spectrum access practices.
DSA improves spectrum utilization in three dimensions: frequency, location and time. It enables a network to opportunistically use a wide range of frequencies at points in time and space when and where they are authorized and available. When a non-cooperative user is detected on the same channel, a DSA-enabled device immediately moves to an unoccupied channel. Because many frequencies are utilized only a small portion of the time and in a fraction of locations, DSA enables two or more networks to share a given spectrum band. It also enables a wireless service provider or spectrum user to deploy more than one application or service in a given band.
The DSA Advantage
DSA offers a number of advantages for a wide variety of stakeholders, including:
- RF equipment vendors – to build more spectrally efficient radios;
- Wireless service providers – to better utilize their spectrum assets and access
additional resources on an as-needed basis;
- New market entrants – to gain access to spectrum that was previously
inaccessible or too costly; and
- Regulators – to ensure that spectrum licensees are protected when cognitive
radio technologies are deployed in the same or adjacent bands.