Mechanism to estimate effective spectrum availability inside smart buildings

Abstract

Smart cities and smart buildings must provide their customers with many services, including those associated with health, productivity, and energy efficiency, among others. Short-range wireless systems can provide all of these services, but the significant growth of wireless networks operating within a smart building (SB) can produce the phenomenon of spectrum shortages. Spectrum shortages could be resolved using Cognitive Radio (CR)-based systems to improve the efficiency of electromagnetic spectrum use by taking advantage of the reusable spectrum available in the building’s interior. This study proposes a mechanism using two interference conditions to quickly estimate the minimum amount of effective spectrum availability (ESA) inside an SB. The results show that an SB contains ESA distributed across 36% to 98% of the building’s area for reuse, as a function of the height of the building and of the distance from the base station (BS) of the primary system.