DARPA announces Spectrum Collaboration Challenge at IWCE 2016

But what if humans didn’t have to plan all spectrum usage, and machines could do this work? What if—through proactive sharing—devices on communications networks could work together, without human interference, to the benefit of the entire spectrum?

“In this challenge, multiple radio networks are going to be given access to the exact same spectrum, with absolutely no knowledge of each other ahead of time,” said Tilghman. “Their job is to dynamically understand the world around them, understand the other radios that are occupying the same space around them, and collaborate with those radios to come up with on-the-fly strategies that optimize not just their own use of the spectrum, but optimize the overall use of the spectrum.“ 

DARPA is developing a test bed, called the RF Coliseum, where these systems will interact with one another virtually, to determine which systems work the best when presented with real-world challenges, Tilghman said.

“The Coliseum lets us connect real, physical radios and put them in a virtual environment,” he said. “It lets us see all of the emergent behavior, test how well these systems optimize the spectrum, and do so under realistic RF conditions.”

After a vetting and evaluation process, the details of which DARPA will release in the coming months, the top performing team will be awarded a purse of $2 million. But tangible rewards aside, the challenge hopefully will change the spectrum paradigm, Tilghman said.

“If we start to make these systems smart, and we give them the ability to actually learn, imagine what could happen,”  Tilghman said. “If the radios have these kinds of capabilities, we can usher in a new era of spectrum.”

To learn more about the challenge as information is released, sign up on the program’s site.