Achieving Fair Spectrum Allocation for Co-Existing Heterogeneous Secondary User Networks

The rapid growth of mobile network traffic has posed a serious challenge to the limited spectrum. The United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowed the utilization of unused TV White Space (TVWS) by unlicensed secondary users (SUs). Particularly, the IEEE 802.19.1 standard is proposed to regulate the coexistence of dissimilar or independently operated SU networks and devices on the TV band. In this paper, we propose a fair spectrum allocation scheme for co-existing SU networks under the IEEE 802.19.1 system architecture. The entire heterogeneous wireless system is divided into two levels, and the spectrum allocation is formulated into a four-stage problem. Unlike previous allocation schemes that maximize the aggregated throughput, the aim of our scheme is to maximize the end user satisfactions within each SU network while maintaining fairness among and within the SU networks. Extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of our spectrum allocation scheme.