Towards Intelligent Spectrum Management: Spectrum Demand Estimation Using Graph Neural Networks

The growing demand for wireless connectivity, combined with limited spectrum resources, calls for more efficient spectrum management. Spectrum sharing is a promising approach; however, regulators need accurate methods to characterize demand dynamics and guide allocation decisions. This paper builds and validates a spectrum demand proxy from public deployment records and uses a graph attention network in a hierarchical, multi-resolution setup (HR-GAT) to estimate spectrum demand at fine spatial scales. The model captures both neighborhood effects and cross-scale patterns, reducing spatial autocorrelation and improving generalization. Evaluated across five Canadian cities and against eight competitive baselines, HR-GAT reduces median RMSE by roughly 21% relative to the best alternative and lowers residual spatial bias. The resulting demand maps are regulator-accessible and support spectrum sharing and spectrum allocation in wireless networks.

AI-Enhanced Spatial Cellular Traffic Demand Prediction with Contextual Clustering and Error Correction for 5G/6G Planning

Accurate spatial prediction of cellular traffic demand is essential for 5G NR capacity planning, network densification, and data-driven 6G planning. Although machine learning can fuse heterogeneous geospatial and socio-economic layers to estimate fine-grained demand maps, spatial autocorrelation can cause neighborhood leakage under naive train/test splits, inflating accuracy and weakening planning reliability. This paper presents an AI-driven framework that reduces leakage and improves spatial generalization via a context-aware two-stage splitting strategy with residual spatial error correction. Experiments using crowdsourced usage indicators across five major Canadian cities show consistent mean absolute error (MAE) reductions relative to location-only clustering, supporting more reliable bandwidth provisioning and evidence-based spectrum planning and sharing assessments.

Towards Flexible Spectrum Access: Data-Driven Insights into Spectrum Demand

In the diverse landscape of 6G networks, where wireless connectivity demands surge and spectrum resources remain limited, flexible spectrum access becomes paramount. The success of crafting such schemes hinges on our ability to accurately characterize spectrum demand patterns across space and time. This paper presents a data-driven methodology for estimating spectrum demand variations over space and identifying key drivers of these variations in the mobile broadband landscape. By leveraging geospatial analytics and machine learning, the methodology is applied to a case study in Canada to estimate spectrum demand dynamics in urban regions. Our proposed model captures 70\% of the variability in spectrum demand when trained on one urban area and tested on another. These insights empower regulators to navigate the complexities of 6G networks and devise effective policies to meet future network demands.

AI-Enabled Data-driven Intelligence for Spectrum Demand Estimation

Accurately forecasting spectrum demand is a key component for efficient spectrum resource allocation and management. With the rapid growth in demand for wireless services, mobile network operators and regulators face increasing challenges in ensuring adequate spectrum availability. This paper presents a data-driven approach leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to estimate and manage spectrum demand. The approach uses multiple proxies of spectrum demand, drawing from site license data and derived from crowdsourced data. These proxies are validated against real-world mobile network traffic data to ensure reliability, achieving an R$^2$ value of 0.89 for an enhanced proxy. The proposed ML models are tested and validated across five major Canadian cities, demonstrating their generalizability and robustness. These contributions assist spectrum regulators in dynamic spectrum planning, enabling better resource allocation and policy adjustments to meet future network demands.

A Graph-Based Approach to Spectrum Demand Prediction Using Hierarchical Attention Networks

The surge in wireless connectivity demand, coupled with the finite nature of spectrum resources, compels the development of efficient spectrum management approaches. Spectrum sharing presents a promising avenue, although it demands precise characterization of spectrum demand for informed policy-making. This paper introduces HR-GAT, a hierarchical resolution graph attention network model, designed to predict spectrum demand using geospatial data. HR-GAT adeptly handles complex spatial demand patterns and resolves issues of spatial autocorrelation that usually challenge standard machine learning models, often resulting in poor generalization. Tested across five major Canadian cities, HR-GAT improves predictive accuracy of spectrum demand by 21% over eight baseline models, underscoring its superior performance and reliability.