Chapter 14 – Cognitive Radio Architecture

Publisher Summary This chapter develops five complementary perspectives of cognitive radio architecture (CRA), called CRA-I through CRA-V, each building on the previous in capability. Architecture is driven top-down by market needs and bottom-up by available, affordable technologies. Taking the top-down perspective requires some attention to the use cases that the functions are intended to realize. This chapter therefore reviews the substantial changes in use cases that drive cognitive wireless architecture. Often technical architectures of the kind accelerate the state of practice by catalyzing work across the industry on plug-and-play, teaming, and collaboration. The thought is that to propel wireless technology from limited spectrum awareness toward valuable user awareness, an architecture is needed. The CRA articulates the functions, components, and design rules of next-generation stand-alone and embedded wireless devices and networks.