IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

The 17 papers in this special issue focus on the theory and applications of cognitive radio. View full abstract»

Cognitive radio networks need to continuously monitor spectrum to detect the presence of the licensed users. In this paper, we have exploited spatial diversity in multiuser networks to improve the spectrum sensing capabilities of centralized cognitive radio (CR) networks. We develop a fixed and a variable relay sensing scheme. The fixed relay scheme employs a relay that has a fixed location to hel... View full abstract»

We define a cyclostationary signature as a feature which may be intentionally embedded in a digital communications signal, detected through cyclostationary analysis and used as a unique identifier. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how cyclostationary signatures can be exploited to overcome a number of the challenges associated with network coordination in emerging cognitive radio applic... View full abstract»

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology that can alleviate the spectrum shortage problem by enabling unlicensed users equipped with CRs to coexist with incumbent users in licensed spectrum bands while causing no interference to incumbent communications. Spectrum sensing is one of the essential mechanisms of CRs and its operational aspects are being investigated actively. However, the securi... View full abstract»

A cognitive radio (CR) network refers to a secondary network operating in a frequency band originally licensed/allocated to a primary network consisting of one or multiple primary users (PUs). A fundamental challenge for realizing such a system is to ensure the quality of service (QoS) of the PUs as well as to maximize the throughput or ensure the QoS, such as signal-to-interference-plus-noise rat... View full abstract»

A cognitive radio can sense its environment and adapt some of its features, such as carrier frequency, transmission bandwidth, transmission power, and modulation, thus allowing dynamic reuse of the available spectrum. Due to their high degree of adaptability to environmental variations, cognitive radios are expected to utilize packet-based transmission with variable-length frames. Packet-based tra... View full abstract»

In this paper, we propose a cognitive radio based multi-user resource allocation framework for mobile ad hoc networks using multi-carrier DS CDMA modulation over a frequency-selective fading channel. In particular, given preexisting communications in the spectrum where the system is operating, in addition to potential narrow-band interference, a channel sensing and estimation mechanism is provided... View full abstract»

Cognitive radios that are employed in a network with dynamic frequency assignments must operate efficiently in the presence of uncertainties and variations in the propagation characteristics of the network's communication links. A low-complexity adaptive transmission protocol is described and evaluated for use in cognitive radio networks whose links have unknown and possibly time-varying propagati... View full abstract»

In this paper we design a cognitive radio that can coexist with multiple parallel WLAN channels while abiding by an interference constraint. The interaction between both systems is characterized by measurement and coexistence is enhanced by predicting the WLAN's behavior based on a continuous-time Markov chain model. Cognitive medium access (CMA) is derived from this model by recasting the problem... View full abstract»

Radio spectrum resource is of fundamental importance for wireless communication. Recent reports show that most available spectrum has been allocated. While some of the spectrum bands (e.g., unlicensed band, GSM band) have seen increasingly crowded usage, most of the other spectrum resources are underutilized. This drives the emergence of open spectrum and dynamic spectrum access concepts, which al... View full abstract»

We propose the cross-layer based opportunistic multi-channel medium access control (MAC) protocols, which integrate the spectrum sensing at physical (PHY) layer with the packet scheduling at MAC layer, for the wireless ad hoc networks. Specifically, the MAC protocols enable the secondary users to identify and utilize the leftover frequency spectrum in a way that constrains the level of interferenc... View full abstract»

Dynamic spectrum access is a promising technique to use spectrum efficiently. Without being restricted to any prefixed spectrum bands, nodes choose operating spectrum on-demand. Such flexibility, however, makes efficient and fair spectrum access in large-scale networks a great challenge. Prior work in this area focused on explicit coordination where nodes communicate with peers to modify local spe... View full abstract»

Cognitive radio (CR) capitalizes advances in signal processing and radio technology and is capable of reconfiguring RF and switching to desired frequency bands. It is a frequency-agile data communication device that is vastly more powerful than recently proposed multi-channel multi-radio (MC-MR) technology. In this paper, we investigate the important problem of multi-hop networking with CR nodes. ... View full abstract»

Mission-oriented MANETs are characterized by implicit common group objectives which make inter-node cooperation both logical and feasible. We propose new techniques to leverage two optimizations for cognitive radio networks that are specific to such contexts: opportunistic channel selection and cooperative mobility. We present a new formal model for MANETs consisting of cognitive radio capable nod... View full abstract»

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are envisaged to extend Internet access and other networking services in personal, local, campus, and metropolitan areas. Mesh routers (MR) form the connectivity backbone while performing the dual tasks of packet forwarding as well as providing network access to the mesh clients. However, the performance of such networks is limited by traffic congestion, as only limit... View full abstract»

In order to fully utilize scarce spectrum resources, dynamic spectrum allocation becomes a promising approach to increase the spectrum efficiency for wireless networks. However, the collusion among selfish network users may seriously deteriorate the efficiency of dynamic spectrum sharing. The network users' behaviors and dynamics need to be taken into consideration for efficient and robust spectru... View full abstract»

We address the problem of spectrum pricing in a cognitive radio network where multiple primary service providers compete with each other to offer spectrum access opportunities to the secondary users. By using an equilibrium pricing scheme, each of the primary service providers aims to maximize its profit under quality of service (QoS) constraint for primary users. We formulate this situation as an... View full abstract»

The concept of cognitive radio (or secondary spectrum access) is currently under investigation as a promising paradigm to achieve efficient use of the frequency resource by allowing the coexistence of licensed (primary) and unlicensed (secondary) users in the same bandwidth. According to the property-rights model of cognitive radio, the primary terminals own a given bandwidth and may decide to lea... View full abstract»