DySPAN Standards Committee (DySPAN-SC)

IEEE 1900.5

IEEE 1900.5 Working Group (WG) on Policy Language and Architectures for Managing Cognitive Radio for Dynamic Spectrum Access Applications

Completed Standards

IEEE Std 1900.5TM-2011: Standard for Policy Language Requirements and System Architectures for Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems

IEEE Std 1900.5.1TM-2020: Standard for Policy Language for Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems

IEEE Std 1900.5.2TM-2024: Standard for Modeling Spectrum Consumption

IEEE Standard 1900.5 Status

The original IEEE 1900.5 standard provided the vision and requirements for a policy language that became IEEE Std 1900.5.1. It became apparent that the IEEE 1900.5 standard was not so useful in guiding the development of DySPAN applications and so it is now being revised with the intent of identifying the controls that are necessary for a DySPAN application to be complete at a high level of review. The pyramid diagram shows the hierarchy of controls that are sought. The controls should be clear, verifiable and enforceable with the upper levels enabling or restricting finer grained actions/behaviors/requirements that need to be satisfied by the lower levels and their policies.

IEEE Std 1900.5 Revision Scope

This standard defines a vendor-independent set of architecture requirements, components and interfaces for managing the functionality and behavior of Dynamic Spectrum Access networks.

IEEE Std 1900.5 Revision Purpose

The purpose of this standard is to define requirements for interoperable, vendor-independent control of Dynamic Spectrum Access functionality and behavior in radio systems and wireless networks. This standard will also define the relationship of policy language, architecture and interfaces to the needs of at least the following constituencies: the regulator, the operator, the user, and the network equipment manufacturer.

IEEE Standard 1900.5.1 Status

The IEEE 1900.5.1-2020 Standard was found to be too limiting in its definition. The currently defined Policy Language is solely based on W3C Rule Interchange Format (RIF) defined elements and thus provides an entirely declarative approach. Hence, permitted behavior corresponds to solutions of logical clauses that represent the set of applicable policies. However, the effective use of policies should not be restricted to checking candidate solutions, but instead a policy engine should be capable of returning an appropriate set of solutions. In addition, richer interactions with the algorithmic strategies are needed so that the set of possible solutions can be narrowed down incrementally. As a result, the IEEE 1900.5.1 is undergoing a revision to correct these deficiencies. The following are the scope and purpose of that work.

IEEE Std 1900.5.1 Revision Scope

This standard defines a policy language for interoperable, vendor-independent control of Dynamic Spectrum Access functionality and behavior in radio systems and wireless networks. The standard provides a formal language that specifies policies for radio devices which use cognitive patterns in their operating behavior. The standard uses ontological modeling in conjunction with logic rules to provide the informational basis for knowledge representation and entailing statements for cognitive radios. This standard provides:
1. The syntax documentation of the policy language
2. The semantics of syntactical phrases based on Floyd-Hoare axiomatic semantics paradigm.
3. The verification of the policy language against IEEE Std 1900.5 stipulations
4. An exemplary demonstration of the applicability of the policy language to compatibility constraints defined in IEEE Std 1900.5.2
5. Demonstration that the policy language can be implemented by a reference interpreter/compiler

IEEE Std 1900.5.1 Revision Purpose

IEEE Std 1900.5 defines cognitive radios as a type of radio in which the device is aware of the radio’s environment (which can include location, time, or other operational parameters related to communication systems) and internal state and can make decisions about the radio operating behavior based on that information and predefined objectives. As environmental awareness and dynamic, objective-steered, decision making cannot be achieved on a basis of static data and procedure, adaptive knowledge capturing organization, representation, and reasoning is involved in this decision process. To facilitate productive, cooperative behavior in a dynamic ecosystem of communicating devices, the process of decision-making in cognitive radios applies dynamically adaptable guidelines, expressed as policies, which this standard provides. Evidently, cognitive radios need to operate under real time conditions. To facilitate real time conditions, this standard also provides computational complexity bounds on all
processes involved in information processing. Furthermore, this standard is required to explain the relationship of that policy language to the needs of at least the following constituencies: the regulator, the operator, the user, and the network equipment manufacturer.

IEEE Standard 1900.5.2 Status

IEEE Std 1900.5.2 defines a method to model the consumption of spectrum by spectrum dependent systems (SDSs) and the computations that assess whether one model is compatible with another.  These models are used in multiple roles in spectrum management and dynamic spectrum access. The bow-tie diagram illustrates that spectrum consumption models (SCMs) are intended to be a loose coupler among systems that perform dynamic spectrum management and devices that access spectrum dynamically. SCMs are a means to define spectrum use policy in a machine-readable way and enables the development of spectrum management systems that can manage systems that access spectrum dynamically. SCMs may also be used by SDSs to collectively collaborate in their access to spectrum.

The recent revision of this standard was completed and approved in December 2024. The revision effort improved the standard overall based on years of its use by adding greater specificity to the roles of data elements, streamlining the computations to ensure tractability, and providing schemas for easier implementation.  These schemas are open source and can be found here.

The scope and purpose of the standard follows

IEEE Std 1900.5.2 Scope

This standard defines a generalized method for modeling spectrum consumption of any type of use of radio frequency (RF) spectrum and the attendant computations for arbitrating the compatibility among models. The methods of modeling are chosen to support the development of tractable algorithms for determining the compatibility between models and for performing various spectrum management tasks that operate on a plurality of models. The modeling methods are exclusively focused on capturing spectrum use to support the determination of compatibility as opposed to being a data standard that seeks to support a particular business process of spectrum management. However, such externally defined spectrum management data standards can beneficially leverage the spectrum consumption modeling defined in this standard.

This standard defines the data requirement for spectrum consumption models (SCMs), provides data rules that help ensure an SCM is valid, and provides two schemas, one in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and another one in XML Schema Definition (XSD), to support SCM data exchange. The data elements and their meaning are the critical parts of the modeling and may be expressed by any data schema if content and context are preserved.

IEEE Std 1900.5.2 Purpose

This standard defines an analytical framework of necessary modeling constructs that can be used to express the boundaries of spectrum consumption by any transmitting or receiving device. These constructs can be combined into a machine-readable data exchange schema for the purpose of transferring these SCMs between automated systems. This standard can serve as a loose coupler for the spectrum management enterprise by providing all spectrum communities of interest with a common way to express spectrum consumption. Further, the standard describes algorithms that can evaluate compatibility among SCMs and enables the creation of algorithms that can perform spectrum management tasks such as finding reuse opportunities or optimizing spectrum assignments to increase spectrum utilization. To achieve this goal, the SCMs must be sufficient in that the algorithms can perform these functions using the models alone without dependence on external information.

The effectiveness of these approaches depends on the quality of the models. The quality of the models depends on the quality of the data on system performance used to build the models and the willingness of the modelers to reveal the true use and vulnerability of the systems to interference. Specifying the required data quality and the accuracy of the models is beyond the scope of the standard.

Working group procedures

Working group documents

  • WG documents including contributions, agendas, and minutes can be found here

Contacts

John Stine (IEEE 1900.5 Working Group Chair)

Carlos Caicedo, PhD (IEEE 1900.5 Working Group Vice Chair)

Eric Lindahl (IEEE 1900.5 Working Group Secretary)