A Location-Based Method for Specifying RF Spectrum Rights

We provide a method to specify location based spectrum rights that enables spectrum management with finer resolution in space and frequency. This method accounts for the attenuation of transmissions from their source and so reveals the location based opportunities to reuse spectrum. The method uses a concise yet flexible data structure that has six parts: a signal strength, a frequency, a spectrum mask, a power map, a propagation map, and a scaling factor. Through the use of one or multiple of these parts most any type of spatial spectrum use authorization or protection may be defined. The structure allows spectrum to be managed as a spatial resource and so subdivided for spatial reuse or for resale. We provide several examples to demonstrate its versatility in spectrum management. We provide some observations and theorems that are useful in developing algorithms to verify compliance to the rights and restrictions conveyed in the proposed method and to discern when coexistent spectrum use is possible. This method provides a unified approach to define spectrum use that can be used to license spectrum, to optimize spectrum reuse, to negotiate spectrum rights, and to specify spectrum policy. It is ideally suited for over-the-air management of spectrum use.