Cognitive Radio – Three Models for Spectrum Sharing

Continuing in our series on Cognitive Radio, I found a nice summary primer on Cognitive Radio and Software Defined Radio here. The emergence of DSP and higher speed analog-to-digital convertors gives Software Defined Radio techniques an advantage over the traditional demodulator block.

The paper goes on to describe three models for spectrum sharing. They are command and control, exclusive use, and unlicensed use. As for exclusive use, from time to time the US government auctions off spectrum to private companies who can do what they want with the spectrum – similar to property rights. Command and control has been the standard for spectrum usage in the US as bandwidth is licensed to specific users for a specific use case. Finally, the ISM band is an example of unlicensed use in which spectrum is made available on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no guarantee of interference protection.

The paper goes on to discuss how Cognitive Radio techniques must be able to work in all three of these cases. We’ll explore these three methods in the coming weeks.


Best regards,
Hall T.