SpectrumX research partners, students present research findings at TPRC 51

By Christina Clark

In September, SpectrumX researchers—along with industry and government representatives—came together at TPRC 51: The 51st Annual Telecommunications Policy Research Conference in Washington, DC. 

For many of the Center’s spectrum researchers, TPRC is a regular part of their annual calendar.

“TPRC once again provided an exceptional forum to discuss spectrum management. What seemed different – and even better – is that the SpectrumX participation is becoming an annual feature and expectation,” said Ilia Murtazashvili, SpectrumX lead of Project Team Rights (PT-Rights) and professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Randall Berry, department chair and professor at Northwestern University, agreed with Murtazashvili that the growing presence of SpectrumX members further connects researchers on pertinent topics each year at the conference.

“TPRC is one of the top venues for work related to spectrum policy,” Berry said. “It draws a cross section of researchers from law, economics, and engineering and provides a very dynamic forum for discussions on policy related topics.”

SpectrumX Center members in attendance at TPRC 51 included Berry; founding member Whitney Lohmeyer, professor at Olin College of Engineering and chief technologist of the Space Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); Murtazashvili; University of Pittsburgh postdoc Ali Palida; and founding ]member and professor at the University of Pittsburgh Martin Weiss.

“It was great to see members of SpectrumX’s PT-Rights group in-person, which meets every couple of weeks online,” said Murtazashvili. “Just about every member of our group was either in Washington, D.C., or was on a paper that was presented. The group provides an ideal forum to discuss our TPRC papers before the conference, as well as to strategize about what we will do with our research going forward – whether it is revising them for peer-reviewed journals, leveraging research to develop ideas for new projects, or reworking some of the ideas into actionable policy briefs.”

At TPRC 51, SpectrumX partners, both who attended in person and who were not in person, had five papers published including:

  • Bustamante, Pedro, Marcela Gomez, Prashant Krishnamurthy, William Lehr, Ilia Murtazashvili, Ali Palida, and Martin BH Weiss. “Unassigned Spectrum: An Institutional Analysis of Radio Spectrum Management.” Available at SSRN 4528676 (2023).
    • From the abstract:Spectrum management is typically analyzed by comparing licensed from unlicensed regimes. The former is typically assumed to be a market regime and the latter analyzed through a lens of commons governance. We introduce the idea of unassigned spectrum as a general category of spectrum management that nests within it both licensed and unlicensed uses.”
  • Crepelle, Adam, and Ilia Murtazashvili. “Artificial Intelligence on Indian Reservations in the United States: Prospects and Challenges.” Available at SSRN 4528766 (2023).
    • From the abstract: “Increases in computing power have contributed to tremendous improvements in Artificial Intelligence (AI). Despite increasing deployment of AI by public, private, and nonprofit organizations, consideration of AI on American Indian reservations remains in its infancy. In this paper, we suggest that consideration of Internet policy on tribal lands should be expanded beyond consideration of barriers to broadband access to include responsible adoption of emergent technologies, including AI.”
  • Berry, Randall, Thomas W. Hazlett, Michael Honig, and J. Nicholas Laneman. “Evaluating the CBRS Experiment.” Available at SSRN 4528763 (2023).
    • From the abstract: In 2015, the FCC established the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) for sharing the 3.5 GHz Band (3550-3700 MHz) among federal and non-federal users in the United States…This paper explores the technical implementation of the CBRS spectrum sharing approach, and then attempts to appraise the economic welfare results of the novel allocation policy.”
  • Bustamante, Pedro, Marcela Gomez, Prashant Krishnamurthy, Michael J. Madison, Ilia Murtazashvili, Balaji Palanisamy, Ali Palida, and Martin BH Weiss. “On the Governance of Federated Platforms.” Available at SSRN 4528712 (2023).
    • From the abstract: “We consider the governance of federated systems (interacting autonomous platforms) associated with social media…Our agent-based model provides us with the observation that there is little churn in users once they settle on a platform. We discuss several ways to extend our model of federated systems as well as lay a groundwork for comparisons of federated and centralized social media systems.”
  • Phillip Post, Olin College of Engineering, Kaitlyn Fleming, Olin College of Engineering,  Abigail Omer, Olin College of Engineering, Zayn Patel, Babson College, Devyn Oh, Olin College of Engineering, Mohir Vemuri, Olin College of Engineering and Whitney Lohmeyer, Olin College of Engineering “An Analytical Comparison of Geostationary (GSO) and Non-geostationary (NGSO) Satellite Filings Submitted to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Between 2012 to 2022” Available at SSRN 4528719
    • From the abstract: “The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) International Bureau Filing System (IBFS) and Experimental Licensing System (ELS) have received an unprecedented number of satellite applications with IBFS intended for commercial licenses while ELS is for experimental ones…By understanding filing trends for the last decade, it is possible to see the current and future direction of the space industry at large and help policy makers review and make regulations that meet the needs of this rapidly evolving sector.”

For updates on upcoming SpectrumX events, please visit spectrumx.org/get-involved to sign up for our email list and future newsletter.

SpectrumX Postdoc Ali Palida presenting "Governance of Federated Platforms" with Will Rinehard, from the Center for Growth and Opportunity from Utah State University. Provided.
In the image, Ali and Will are at laptops at the front of the room in front of presentation screens.
SpectrumX Postdoc Ali Palida presenting “Governance of Federated Platforms” with Will Rinehard, from the Center for Growth and Opportunity from Utah State University. Provided.

Image captions:

Top right: SpectrumX’s Ilia Murtazashvili speaks with Ali Palida and Christos Makridis. Provided.


About SpectrumX

SpectrumX is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its Spectrum Innovation Initiative, under grant number AST 21-32700. SpectrumX is the world’s largest academic hub where all radio spectrum stakeholders can innovate, collaborate, and contribute to maximizing social welfare of this precious resource.

To learn more about SpectrumX, please visit spectrumx.org.

Contact:
Christina Clark, Research Communications Specialist
SpectrumX / Notre Dame Research / University of Notre Dame
cclark26@nd.edu / 574.631.2665
spectrumx.org