Harm Claim Thresholds: On the Use of Extreme Value Theory for Receiver Environment Characterization

摘要

Dynamic spectrum access deployments potentially enable non-deterministic operation across the electrospace, minimally defined by frequency, space and time axes. This poses several challenges for traditional spectrum management, particularly approaches to spectrum measurement and planning, as well as compliance enforcement. Interference limit policies such as the recently proposed harm claim threshold approach, shift from the traditional transmitter-centric approaches to regulation as they enable quantitative specification of acceptable interference environments for receiver operation. However, a key challenge to successfully leverage such policies is the ability to design and conduct practical and appropriate measurement plans for compliance enforcement. In this paper extreme value theory and the use of regional frequency analysis techniques are proposed for characterizing the receiver environment. A framework is presented for determination of the receiver environment, particularly for estimating order statistics and tail distributions, in support of the enforcement of harm claim thresholds. Measurement data and simulated scenarios are used to demonstrate the approach. Results highlight the importance of, as well as expand the work on, the use of extreme value theory and regional frequency analysis as a powerful mathematical tool for proving claims of interference and specifying appropriate confidence intervals for such claims. This paper provides valuable input into the current discussions on regulatory policies for deployment of harm claim thresholds, as well as for compliance enforcement.