Bandwidth Exchange for Fair Secondary Coexistence in TV White Space

Abstract

The recent ruling by the FCC has mandated a geo-location database approach to regulate the coexistence of primary and secondary users in TV white space. However, mechanisms for secondary coexistence have been left unspecified and prompts the design and study of the same. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to incentivize fair and efficient secondary user cooperation. Specifically, we assume the existence of cognitive radio equipped secondary users capable of OFDMA with the ability to dynamically exchange subcarriers among themselves. Based on a previously proposed incentive mechanism called Bandwidth Exchange (BE), we further leverage the capability of the mandatory geo-location database to enable fast negotiation between potential cooperation partners to realize a Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS) for secondary coexistence. We illustrate how this mechanism works when secondary users in an OFDMA access network form cooperation through BE for which the NBS is calculated based on information obtained from the database.