Modeling Local Demand for Mobile Spectrum: An Interpretable Machine Learning Approach

With the expansion of 5G networks and the ongoing development of future 6G networks, the demand for mobile spectrum is expected to continue to grow, particularly at a local level. In response, spectrum regulators globally are exhibiting growing interest in enhancing their understanding of current mobile spectrum demand. The goal is twofold: to maximize the socioeconomic benefits of this finite resource and to ensure that spectrum policy and licensing decisions continue to drive innovation within the wireless industry. Despite its importance, research in modeling mobile spectrum demand has been notably scarce, particularly at the granularity required in the spectrum regulatory domain. To address this gap, this paper presents a data-driven approach to estimate localized mobile spectrum demand within the context of spectrum regulation. A novel demand proxy is first introduced, derived from a large and diverse dataset of crowdsourced commercial mobile measurements. Subsequently, spectrum demand modeling is formulated as a regression task and a variety of classical machine learning models are explored, leveraging publicly available geospatial data as input features. The top-performing model successfully achieves an R2 of 0.76 and a Root Mean Square Error of 51.02 on the hold-out test set. Finally, a machine learning interpretability technique is applied to demonstrate how these models can be used for regulatory decision-making, particularly in scenarios requiring transparency and accountability.