IU-GUARD: Privacy-Preserving Spectrum Coordination for Incumbent Users under Dynamic Spectrum Sharing

TL;DR

IU-GUARD tackles privacy risks in dynamic spectrum sharing by decoupling incumbent identity from spectrum access. It uses verifiable credentials issued by a trusted CA and non-interactive zero-knowledge proofs to let IUs anonymously prove authorization to the SCS, while only exposing minimal operational data in plaintext. The framework delivers authentication, authorization, and enforcement with unlinkable access requests, avoiding centralized data leakage and improving deployability over prior IIC-based approaches. Prototype evaluation shows modest runtime and messaging overhead compatible with real-time DSS deployment, indicating practical privacy guarantees for incumbent protection in bands like CBRS. The work advances privacy-preserving spectrum coordination by combining standards-based VC/ZKP techniques with existing SCS workflows, enabling scalable, secure incumbent protection in future DSS deployments.

Abstract

With the growing demand for wireless spectrum, dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) frameworks such as the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) have emerged as practical solutions to improve utilization while protecting incumbent users (IUs) such as military radars. However, current incumbent protection mechanisms face critical limitations. The Environmental Sensing Capability (ESC) requires costly sensor deployments and remains vulnerable to interference and security risks. Alternatively, the Incumbent Informing Capability (IIC) requires IUs to disclose their identities and operational parameters to the Spectrum Coordination System (SCS), creating linkable records that compromise operational privacy and mission secrecy. We propose IU-GUARD, a privacy-preserving spectrum sharing framework that enables IUs to access spectrum without revealing their identities. Leveraging verifiable credentials (VCs) and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), IU-GUARD allows IUs to prove their authorization to the SCS while disclosing only essential operational parameters. This decouples IU identity from spectrum access, prevents cross-request linkage, and mitigates the risk of centralized SCS data leakage. We implement a prototype, and our evaluation shows that IU-GUARD achieves strong privacy guarantees with practical computation and communication overhead, making it suitable for real-time DSS deployment.

Figures (4)

• Figure 1: Evolution of incumbent protection under DSS.
• Figure 2: IU-GUARD system architecture.
• Figure 3: Credential issuance and spectrum access.
• Figure 4: Performance evaluation of IU-GUARD, including computation time and system scalability in latency and throughput.