Spectrum Sharing Test and Demonstration Program: Key Findings and Implications

This paper provides a high-level overview of Spectrum Sharing Test and Demonstration (SSTD) activities, findings, and their implications for analyses being conducted by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Defense Spectrum Organization (DSO) and the Military Services to support transition of DoD systems out of the 1755–1780 MHz band due to the Advanced Wireless Services 3 (AWS-3) auction. Four major initiatives are reviewed that together comprise the overall SSTD program; Assess Aggregate Interference, Long-Term Evolution (LTE) Characterization, Propagation Modeling, and Receiver Characterization. Findings from each of these initiatives support the ability for Department of Defense (DoD) to conduct increasingly realistic prediction of the impacts from AWS-3 LTE early-entry systems to incumbent DoD operations in the band. The SSTD program supports greater commercial access to the 1755–1780 MHz frequency band while protecting DoD missions from interference from commercial LTE networks. SSTD findings are focused on AWS-3 spectrum sharing but are also applicable to other spectrum sharing scenarios.