Proof of Sharing in Inter-Operator Spectrum Sharing Markets

Spectrum sharing between cellular operators in the future 5G networks is expected to be a regular phenomena. The accounting of the sharing amount will be an important element for effective inter-operator spectrum sharing. In a recently proposed market where the government subsidizes the operators for sharing their spectrum resources and needs a subsequent verification of which operator shared by how much This verification will help the government to distribute appropriate amount of subsidy to the operators to maximize subscribers’ utility without charging any additional subscription fees. In this paper, we propose two different architectures for measuring spectrum sharing in government subsidized spectrum sharing markets. They are: (1) centralized spectrum manager and (2) cloud-based spectrum manager. In both cases, the spectrum manager records the sharing amount of each participating operator and reports to the government. We call such verification of spectrum sharing as "Proof of Sharing (PoS)", based on which the government finally decides how much subsidy money should be given to a operator.