Employment of software defined radios for dual-use in distributed spectrum monitoring system

The paper proposes a distributed architecture to monitor spectrum occupancy status through the use of Software Defined Radios (SDRs). Such a monitoring process is useful in order to fulfill a geolocation database, whose consultation is a mandatory task for license-exempt devices operating under the IEEE 802.22 standard rules. Moreover, the system is thought for a dual use scenarios: it can be enforced with higher security levels and different sensing approaches when an emergency situation occurs and a military control of the architecture has to be taken; conversely, it can be used by civil authorities for new generation networks, in normal conditions. The system has been tested in laboratory conditions with real SDR devices and Ethernet connection to the central node. First performance results in terms of sensing capabilities are shown in the paper.