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What does Shannon's Law tell us
about spectrum policy?
(Continued)

  • Whenever a good engineer sees a nonlinear term in an equation, he or she usually tries either to eliminate it (if linear performance is necessary) or to exploit the nonlinearity; we can do the latter

  • By implementing "courteous" spectrum sharing and interference avoidance, cognitive radios can be used to keep SNR above the "knee" in the curve. Because returns from greater SNR diminish rapidly above the knee, this yields the best performance that it is practical to achieve with or without sharing

  • At the same time, sharing of spectrum (nonexclusive licensing) allows larger chunks to be allocated so as to maximize the linear term in the equation. This maximizes the product of the two terms, providing the greatest overall utility

  • Allocating spectrum in larger chunks also avoids waste due to imperfect filtering