Modeling and Strategy Design for Spectrum Monitoring over A Geographical Region

Spectrum monitoring is a prerequisite in dynamic access regulation, policy enforcement, as well as spectrum database establishment. In this paper, we introduce the dimension of geographical space into the spectrum monitoring problem, and studied deployment strategies of multiple monitors, in terms of coverage time and cost. The monitoring problem is modeled as a 3-d continuous sweep coverage problem, whose solution space is then reduced by effectively dividing the spectra-location space, in order to achieve a small coverage time. The cost minimization is then formulated as a Multiple Traveling Salesman problem (MTSP), which is NP-hard. By observing the structure of the strategy space, we propose a solution that attains a reasonable cost, without applying complex optimization algorithms.