Radio spectrum monitoring for cognitive radio

It is commonly believed that there is a crisis of spectrum availability due to tremendous growth in the wireless based services and evolution of new radio communication technologies. In fact, there are many areas of the radio spectrum which are not fully utilized. Cognitive radio (CR) has been proposed to enhance utilization of spectrum in opportunistic manner. The first and most important requirement for deployment of CR technology is identification of primary user, which is not an easy job. A spectrum user data bank is need to be established for identification of primary users. This paper provides an overview of spectrum monitoring requirement for maintaining of database for deployment of cognitive radio technology based services.