IoT for Defense and National Security

19Spectrum Challenges in the Internet of Things: State of the Art and Next Steps

Francesco Restuccia¹, Tommaso Melodia¹, and Jonathan Ashdown²

¹Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

²Air Force Research Laboratory, Rome, NY, USA

Abstract

Thanks to the significant growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and fifth‐generation (5G) networks, the radio frequency (RF) spectrum is poised to become an extremely scarce resource in the next few years. On the other hand, although the IoT will require timely, guaranteed and secure information gathering/delivery, the vast majority of IoT devices are still utilizing protocols, architectures and algorithms that were not designed with reconfigurability and adaptability in mind. To tackle the next‐generation spectrum challenges, instead, the IoT must be redesigned to allow spectrum agility “by design”, without any manual and/or human intervention. Spectrum agility in the IoT, however, poses significant core challenges that cannot be addressed solely with state‐of‐the‐art technologies. For example, traditional spectrum management systems are centralized and inflexible, thus not allowing for fine‐grained real‐time spectrum management. Moreover, existing spectrum sharing mechanisms do not consider energy consumption and computational constraints of IoT nodes, which is a fundamental requirement for long‐term network survivability. In this book chapter, we will discuss the technical requirements ...