Quantifying spectrum availability and utility: a tutorial on Whitespace Evaluation SofTware (WEST)

Spectrum whitespaces and dynamic spectrum sharing have become important and interesting topics in recent years. As regulators and parties are making comments about regulations, it is important to be able to quantify the effect of potential regulations. Of particular interest are the TV whitespaces, whose use has been legalized in the USA [1], Canada [2], UK [3], and Singapore [4] as of 2015. We have created a highly powerful and versatile open-source software package, WEST [5], that quickly allows a user to estimate the amount of whitespace in a given region under a real-world or hypothetical regulatory set. WEST can also be used for quantitative and datadriven spectrum analyses in other bands. WEST was designed to help researchers, industry members, and regulators alike. For the software to realize its full potential, members of the spectrum sharing community need to be able to use it and contribute to it. Through a lecture, a demonstration, and an interactive session, this tutorial aims to facilitate the use of WEST by these parties.