Evolving Spectrum-Sharing Regulation through Data-, Science-, and Technology-Driven Analysis and Decision-Making

Click here to see the full video record of ISART 2022, now available on the NTIA YouTube Channel

The goal for ISART 2022 which took place (virtually) June 13-16, 2022, was to chart a technical roadmap and gain consensus for specific data-, science-, and technology-driven means to evolve and expedite spectrum sharing analyses and decision making, and identify opportunities for continuous improvements and developments beyond the current linear spectrum sharing process. An abbreviated ISART 2022 Prequel was held in conjunction with the Office of Spectrum Management's annual Spectrum Policy Symposium to collect stakeholder feedback in preparation for a full ISART 2022.

To further assist in planning, following the Prequel ITS issued a call for input that described the background and concerns that led to defining the goal for 2022 and requested relevant abstracts, recent publications, articles, or papers. Respondents submitted many relevant citations and original papers; 32 citations and 15 original papers submitted in response to the call for input contributed substantively to shaping the final agenda and are cited in the Background Reference Bibliography.

Click on a speaker's name to access their presentation where available. Speaker biographies are here.

Tutorials

• Tutorial Series #1: Current U.S. Regulatory Process to Establish Spectrum Sharing
  Pre-recorded tutorial presentations succinctly describe each step of the current spectrum regulatory process. The tutorials are designed to provide background on how the spectrum sharing regulatory process currently works so that the panels can focus on evolving those processes.
  • Introduction to the Spectrum Sharing Regulatory Process and Spectrum Management in the U.S.
    Rebecca Dorch, Senior Spectrum Policy Analyst, NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
  • Spectrum Repurposing and Sharing: Drivers and Authorities
    Peter Tenhula, Senior Fellow, Spectrum Policy Initiative, Silicon Flatirons
  • Overview of the NTIA Approach to Spectrum Sharing Feasibility Studies and Analysis
    Edward Drocella, Chief, and Nick La Sorte, Electrical Engineer, Spectrum Engineering and Analysis Division, NTIA Office of Spectrum Management
  • Overview of the FCC’s Rulemaking Process
    Suzanne Tetrault
  • Overview of the NTIA Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee
    Peter Tenhula, Senior Fellow, Spectrum Policy Initiative, Silicon Flatirons
  • Putting the Spectrum Sharing Regulatory Process All Together – CBRS as a Case Study
    Rebecca Dorch, Senior Spectrum Policy Analyst, NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
• Tutorial Series #2: Lessons Learned from Spectrum Sharing Regulatory Efforts and Use Cases
  Recognizing lessons learned from the development and implementation of spectrum sharing regulatory rules over the past decade can lead to process improvements. Each of these recorded tutorial presentations focuses on one individual prior spectrum sharing proceeding and any lessons learned from that particular proceeding. These tutorials are designed to provide background for registrants less familiar with past proceedings and enable panelists to reference specific proceedings without needing to explain the context.
  • TV White Spaces – Lessons Learned
    Mark Gibson, Director, Business Development and Regulatory Policy, CommScope
  • UNII-Dynamic Frequency Selection – Lessons Learned
    Frank Sanders, Senior Technical Fellow, NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
  • Citizens Broadband Radio Service – Lessons Learned
    Andy Clegg, Spectrum Engineering Lead, Google
  • Advanced Wireless Services-3 – Lessons Learned
    Howard McDonald, Director, Defense Spectrum Organization, DISA (Retired)

Monday, June 13, 2022

• Introduction and Opening Remarks
  Eric Nelson, Director (Acting), NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
• Fireside Chat
  • Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator
  • Anna M. Gomez, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
• Panel: Exploring the Theme of ISART 2022
  The ISART Chairs and members of the Technical Planning Committee explain the motivation behind this year’s theme and the impetus for the goal of the symposium: To chart a roadmap and gain consensus for data-, science-, and technology-driven means to evolve and expedite spectrum sharing analyses and regulatory decision-making.
  • Rebecca Dorch, J.D., Senior Spectrum Policy Analyst, Institute for Telecommunications Sciences, and ISART General Chair
  • Michael G. Cotton, Theory Division Chief, Institute for Telecommunication Sciences, and ISART Technical Chair
  • Howard H. McDonald, Defense Spectrum Organization (DSO), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Retired and ISART Technical Committee member
  • John Chapin, Special Advisor for Spectrum, National Science Foundation and ISART Technical Committee member
• Keynote: Spectrum Management Principles
  Charles Cooper, NTIA Associate Administrator, Office of Spectrum Management
• Panel: Industry Lessons Learned from Spectrum Sharing
  Learning from lessons of the past should enhance spectrum sharing implementation and process reform efforts. This panel provides industry perspectives on lessons learned from their experiences implementing spectrum sharing, and on the linear processes utilized for establishing spectrum sharing rules over the past decade, identifies universal lessons learned, and addresses ways to build upon knowledge gained to enhance, expedite, and improve the processes. Goal: Industry recommendations on process improvement and spectrum sharing parameters. What are the key concerns industry typically has relative to the regulatory process and implementation of spectrum sharing? Have these concerns been different depending on the sharing scenario (FED-Industry, Industry-Industry). How has the anticipated/expected technology to be deployed by industry impacted the regulatory process and when is that information typically shared with the regulators?
  • Moderator: Bryan Tramont, Managing Partner, Wilkinson Barker Knauer
  • William Davenport, Senior Director, Government Affairs, Cisco
  • Mark Gibson, Director, Business Development & Regulatory Policy, CommScope
  • Scott Palo, Associate Director SpectrumX, Charles Victor Schelke Endowed Professor, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Shalini Periyalwar, Expert Director, Communications Engineering at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), Canada
  • Neeti Tandon, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff & Technical Fellow, AT&T

Tuesday, June 14, 2022

• Opening Remarks
  Michael Cotton, ISART Technical Chair
• Keynote: History of Spectrum Auctions
  Evan Kwerel, Senior Economic Advisor, Office of Economics and Analytics, FCC, and 2021 Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement recipient
• Panel: Economics of Spectrum Sharing
  All the best of intentions and plans to develop a flexible framework that allows for an iterative approach to regulatory and licensing rules must also work for industry by creating additional spectrum value and maintaining sufficient certainty for business to operate. This panel discusses both the potential obstacles and opportunities for changing regulatory approaches to develop an iterative regulatory approach that might maximize the value and use of the spectrum over time. Could it be possible to generate more value from spectrum by allowing for some flexibility in sharing rules after licensing? How important is stability to companies’ long-term capital expenditure decisions, including decisions to spend billions at spectrum auctions for licenses with expectations of renewal rights to access spectrum long term? Are shared, opportunistic, or unlicensed spectrum access models more consistent with an iterative/continuous regulatory improvement model? Could there be a regulatory approach that would allow for adjusting license rules to enhance the value and use of the spectrum once licenses are assigned? Could there be opportunities for moving towards shorter term investments in the telecommunications sector? Are there competitive assignment approaches that could work for shorter term licenses and investments? How would spectrum valuation—and consequently auction revenues and SRF contributions—be impacted?
  
  • Moderator: Giulia McHenry, Chief, Office of Economics and Analytics, Federal Communications Committee
  • Carolyn A. Kahn, Chief Spectrum Economist, The MITRE Corporation
  • Sarah Oh Lam, Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute
  • Edgar Rivas, Legislative Assistant, United States Senate, Senator John Hickenlooper (D-CO)
  • Gregory L. Rosston, Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Director of the Public Policy program
  • Martin Weiss, Professor of Telecommunications, University of Pittsburgh
• Panel: Data Sharing and Transparency
  Availability of spectrum data is limited because (1) proprietary constraints exist to maintain IP and competitiveness, (2) government data policies and restrictions exist to ensure national security, and (3) data acquisition is expensive. This causes (a) long time delays and conservative assumptions in spectrum management analyses, and (b) limited progress in data science applied to spectrum. This panel explores administrative, technological, and system solutions to data sharing and transparency. What spectrum planning analyses and processes would immediately benefit from improved data sharing and transparency? What types of data sharing and transparency strategies can help us overcome the current barriers faced by spectrum analysts/researchers? Do we have concrete recent examples of where data sharing and transparency has been improved? What were the key mechanisms that enabled these improvements (e.g., governance changes, open data, open code, etc.)? Can these examples be replicated in other areas, or further expanded in terms of scope, such as across models, frequencies, applications, use cases, and enhanced across time and space?
  
  • Moderator: Edward Oughton, Assistant Professor of Data Analytics, George Mason University
  • Kaushik Chowdhury, Professor and Associate Director of the Institute for the Wireless IoT, Northeastern University
  • Eli Cohen, Deployment Strategist, Palantir Technologies
  • Ian Fogg, VP Analysis, Opensignal
  • Paul Tilghman, Senior Director of Azure Spectrum Technologies, Microsoft
  • Gregory Wagner, Defense Spectrum Organization (DSO), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

• Opening Remarks
  Howard H. McDonald, Defense Spectrum Organization (DSO), Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Retired
• Keynote: Cost-Benefit-Risk Related to National Security
  Frederick D. Moorefield, Jr., Deputy Chief Information Officer for Command, Control, and Communications (C3), Office of the Secretary of Defense, Chief Information Officer
• Panel: Risk-informed Interference Analysis
  This panel will first take a broad view of risk assessment in several regulated industries. We will explore what it is, how risk assessment is done, and what lessons have been learned about risk assessment in the last 40 years of use. We will then delve into the details of how risk assessment might be applied in spectrum coexistence studies. We will explore how risk assessment might make a difference in spectrum management, both in regulatory feasibility studies and/or to facilitate successful operation. Other questions include: What is unacceptable vs acceptable risk? What tools and skills are needed? Where has risk assessment made a difference to outcomes? What should we do differently, going forward?
  
  • Moderator: JP de Vries, Director Emeritus and Distinguished Advisor, Silicon Flatirons
  • Mohamad Omar Al-Kalaa, Staff Fellow/Electrical Engineer, Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
  • Kumar Balachandran, Expert, Ericsson Research
  • Robert Henry, Principal Risk Manager, The MITRE Corporation
  • Kalle Kontson, Principal Professional Staff at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
  • Nick LaSorte, Electrical Engineer, NTIA Office of Spectrum Management (OSM)
• Technical Presentation: ITS Propagation Modeling Research and Development
  William ("Billy") Kozma, Jr., Computer Engineer, Telecommunications Theory Division, NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences and Head of U.S. Delegation to ITU-R Study Group 3 and U.S. Chair of Working Party 3K
• Panel: Model Standardization - Propagation Case Study
  Model standardization at a scientific level is required to expedite and ultimately improve the higher-level spectrum sharing analyses and decision process. Scientific consensus, in general, is difficult to achieve. In this panel, we focus on standardization of propagation models because of the unique challenges associated with its scientific complexity, diversity of use cases and conditions, and non-deterministic and highly-variable outcomes. Are existing propagation model standardization processes adequate for the challenges of today? Is there adequate architecture with well-defined interfaces available to standardize the diverse set of existing and new propagation models? Is there incentive for the community to work together toward standardization of propagation models? What validation requirements are needed for community/stakeholder acceptance and trust of new models?
  
  • Moderator: William ("Billy") Kozma, Jr., Head of U.S. Delegation to ITU-R Study Group 3 and U.S. Chair of Working Party 3K
  • Reza Arefi, Head of Emerging Spectrum Strategies, Intel
  • Chrysanthos Chrysanthou, Technical Analysis Branch Chief, FCC
  • Andy Clegg, Spectrum Engineering Lead, Google
  • Tony Rennier, Founder and CEO, Foundry Inc.
  • Sana Salous, Professor, Chair of Communications Engineering, Department of Engineering, Durham University (UK)

Thursday, June 16, 2022

• Technical Presentation: Fast Interference Management
  John Chapin, Special Advisor for Spectrum, National Science Foundation
• Panel: Technical Enablers for Evolving Regulatory Processes
  Evolving regulatory processes result in changing the regulatory requirements in a band after equipment has been deployed. Post-deployment regulatory changes have traditionally been constrained by the high cost of doing new compatibility studies, agreeing on the costs and benefits of the new rules, implementing and deploying new equipment, and designing new sharing or spectrum access mechanisms, as well as the associated high risk to existing revenue streams or mission capabilities. What technical solutions, components, designs and approaches are being developed that will reduce these costs and mitigate these risks? How can translation of spectrum science R&D results to practice be improved to accelerate use of these new approaches?
  
  • Moderator: Douglas Sicker, Senior Associate Dean for Computing and Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado-Denver
  • Charles Baylis, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Baylor University
  • Shannon Blunt, Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Kansas
  • David R. Jackson, Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston
  • John Kuzin, Vice President of Spectrum Policy and Regulatory Counsel, Qualcomm Inc.
  • Tommaso Melodia, William Lincoln Smith Chair Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University
• Panel: Wrap-up and Roadmap
  What are next steps? The panel moderators summarize the most important take-aways from the discussions and consider whether community consensus is possible on any well-developed idea or solution that was discussed and which areas or ideas warrant further research or stakeholder group involvement.
  
  • Moderator: Derek Khlopin, Deputy Associate Administrator, NTIA Office of Spectrum Management (OSM)
  • Eric Nelson, Director (Acting), NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences
  • Giulia McHenry, Chief, Office of Economics and Analytics, Federal Communications Commission
  • Edward Oughton, Assistant Professor of Data Analytics, George Mason University
  • JP de Vries, Director Emeritus and Distinguished Advisor, Silicon Flatirons
  • William ("Billy") Kozma, Jr., Head of U.S. Delegation to ITU-R Study Group 3 and U.S. Chair of Working Party 3K
  • Douglas Sicker, Senior Associate Dean for Computing and Professor of Computer Science, University of Colorado-Denver
• Closing Remarks
  Eric Nelson, Director (Acting), NTIA Institute for Telecommunication Sciences