Artificial Intelligence & Wireless Spectrum: Opportunities and Challenges

Agencies of the NITRD Wireless Spectrum Research & Development (WSRD) Interagency Working Group (IWG) conducted a workshop focused on the application of existing and new AI techniques in the wireless spectrum context.

Wireless spectrum has been managed and utilized over many decades through a complex regulatory framework and a patchwork of policies. The current manual process of assessing spectrum needs is a growing problem due to the high-level of interdependencies in the spectrum domain. Existing and emerging methods for allocating spectrum are often driven by small studies that suffer from inherent biases. As a result, spectrum policies and usage are often sub-optimal and rigid, preventing efficient use of wireless spectrum. As the U.S. moves forward as a leader in 5G technologies and deployment, it critically needs fast and efficient wireless spectrum policy creation, adoption, and management of wireless spectrum.

Artificial Intelligence techniques have been successfully applied in many other domains, such as image classification or autonomous navigation, which previously relied on either a model-based approaches or a vital human-in-the-loop element. Despite the differences between multimedia and RF signals, researchers have shown that the judicious integration of Artificial Intelligence techniques can provide similar gains in the wireless spectrum domain. Areas explored in this workshop included, but were not limited to:

• Artificial Intelligence for Future Communications Networks
• Artificial Intelligence for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation and Policy Management
• Artificial Intelligence for Spectrum Sharing

Experts from government, private industry, and academia discussed current use cases, effective technology, tools, and practices, while identifying gaps and issues that will require additional research to resolve.

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