ICWCA 2012 - Special Track Cognitive Radio and Software Defined Radio: Technical, Application, Economic, Environmental, and Regulatory Aspects

Special Track 2: Cognitive Radio and Software Defined Radio: Technical, Application, Economic, Environmental, and Regulatory Aspects
Co-chairs: Dr. David Grace, University of York, United Kingdom; Dr. Alvin Yau Kok Lim, Sunway University, Malaysia

The rising number and capacity requirements of radio systems has increased the demand for frequency spectrum. Cognitive radio is the next generation wireless communication systems that offers a revolutionary solution to this problem by proposing opportunistic access to underutilized licensed spectrum owned by the licensed users. Cognitive radio architecture was first proposed by Joseph Mitola III in 1998, and it addresses the organization of the radio domain knowledge into data structures which can be processed in real-time through integrating machine learning and natural language processing technologies into software radio. The features of the architecture are derived from cognitive radio use cases. These include inferring user communications context, shaping access-network demand, and realizing a protocol for real-time radio spectrum rental among others. This new concept allows a radio system to be power efficient and applicable to large scale networks, and most importantly to operate in harmony with licensed users and existing legacy radio systems. For commercialization purpose, regulatory rules, compliance tests, market mechanisms and value chains need to be defined to assure the security and protection of the legacy systems. This track provides a platform for researchers to discuss a wide range of topics relevant to the cognitive radio technology, including technical, regulatory, techno-economic and other aspects. This special track solicits original and unpublished submissions on relevant topics, including but not limited to:

Technical
* Cross-layer algorithms
* PHY and MAC techniques
* Dynamic spectrum access or opportunistic

access
* Sleep modes
* Interference mitigation
* Security issues
* Information theory and performance limits
* Learning and decision making mechanisms
* Hardware design, prototypes, test beds,

demonstrations and real-life deployments
* QoS Architecture and provisioning
Application
* Novel applications
* Cognitive radio applied to green

communications
* Cognitive radio applied to green

environment such as smart homes and

vehicles
* Cognitive radio applied to emergency and

public safety systems
Environmental
* Energy consumption of CR technologies

such as channel sensing and switches
* Energy efficiency metrics and

measurements

Regulatory
* Standardization
* Regulatory structures
* White spaces such as television spectrum

and cellular spectrum