Cognitive Radios in Public Safety and Spectrum Management

As wireless communications become more important to daily life, the wireless research community must create more efficient and useful radios to satisfy the rising needs for spectrum. The cognitive radio work covered in this paper addresses the spectrum and communications issues. Cognitive radios are aware, flexible, and intelligent, and they allow a radio to understand the wireless environment and make autonomous decisions to adapt themselves for efficient operation. A network of cognitive radios is a network that performs independent spectrum management to maximize all radios’ successful operation, even in the presence of legacy, or non-cognitive, radios. This paper discusses work done at Virginia Tech to build a cognitive radio as well as the economic, political, and technological issues surrounding cognitive radio adoption. Specifically, this paper addresses the impact of cognitive radio technology on the public safety community and spectrum management.