Policy-based network management for NeXt Generation spectrum access control

This paper describes the design and implementation of a policy-based spectrum access control framework as part of the DARPA NeXt Generation communications program. The main emphasis of the framework is to overcome two types of concerns: harmful interference caused by a malfunctioning device and harmful interference caused by a malicious user. In tandem with signal-detection-based interference-avoidance algorithms employed by software-defined radios, we design a set of policy-based components, tightly integrated with the accredited kernel on the radio, for avoiding potentially harmful interference caused by a malfunctioning device. The policy conformance and enforcement components ensure that a radio does not violate policies, which define regulatory and other stakeholders' goals and requirements, and which are encoded in an abstract, declarative language. We further secure the policy management and distribution mechanisms in order to prevent malicious users from altering loaded policies as well as from inserting additional policies and thus causing a harmful interference. Additionally, we report on a prototype implementation and demonstration of our framework, which qualitatively illustrates the capability offered to radio for enforcing policies and the capability for managing radios and securing access control to interfaces changing the radio's configuration.