Competition with three-tier spectrum access and spectrum monitoring

The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) recently adopted in the U.S. enables two tiers of commercial users to share spectrum with a third tier of incumbent users. This sharing can be further assisted by Environmental Sensing Capability operators (ESCs), that monitor the spectrum occupancy to determine when use of the spectrum will not harm incumbents. Two key aspects of this framework that impact how firms may compete are the differences in information provided by different ESCs and the different tiers in which a firm may access the spectrum. We develop a game theoretic model that captures both of these features and analyze it to gain insight into their impact. Specifically, we consider a priority access (PA) tier firm has access to the both a licensed band and an unlicensed band, and a general authorized access (GAA) tier firm has access only to the unlicensed band. The PA tier and GAA tier firms compete for users. Our analysis reveals that the amount of unlicensed and licensed bandwidth must be chosen judiciously in order to maximize the social welfare. We also show that a limited amount of unlicensed access by the PA tier firm is beneficial to the user’s surplus as well as to the social welfare.