Reconfiguring Software Defined Radio platform for Dynamic Spectrum Access

Traditional static spectrum allocation policy has resulted in current day spectrum scarcity and inefficient spectrum utilization. Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) technique allows cognitive (unlicensed) user (CU) to opportunistically transmit in a primary (licensed) user (PU) frequency band for a given time if it does not detect any ongoing operations. In this work, CU is implemented on Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform consisting of GNU Radio and USRP. This platform is then reconfigured for DSA based on Cognitive Radio (CR) technology which features include abilities to sense, learn, adapt and react according to the environment. The proposed design of the DSA based CR system consists of four main functional blocks: spectrum sensing, spectrum management, spectrum decision and data transmission. In this paper, we address the implementation of DSA based CR on IEEE802.15.4 standard. The result shows a significant improvement in term of Packet Reception Rate (PRR) for CU with DSA based CR system compared to the system without DSA capability.