NeTS-NECO: Some Fundamental Problems for Performance Study of Opportunistic Spectrum Utilization

Illinois Institute Of Technology, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

NeTS-NECO: Some Fundamental Problems for Performance Study of Opportunistic Spectrum Utilization Summary of Proposed Research Activities: This work will develop, design, and implement efficient wireless network protocols for better spectrum utilization and study some fundamental performance bounds for networks with opportunistic spectrum utilization. This work will study the Nash Equilibrium points of the spectrum sensing game and spectrum access game when secondary users are selfish. This work will design stable distributed link scheduling and routing methods to maximize throughput, and derive some necessary and/or sufficient conditions on attainable flows. This work will also develop tractable and insightful metrics and models for wireless networks using SOPs; obtain upper and lower performance bounds for these metrics for a given set of models; define the negotiation between application and network for picking the operating point. Intellectual Merit: This work not only identifies unexplored important problems (i.e., finding equilibriums of spectrum sensing and access games, studying the capacity limits of networks with SOPs) and offers methods to solve them, but also proposes novel approaches to existing interesting problems. By modeling and analyzing the interactions of secondary users, this work can improve the design of distributed radio resource management algorithms with particular interest towards characterizing the algorithms' steady-state, convergence, and stability properties. Broader Impact: Today new wireless technologies are struggling for bandwidth. Dynamic sharing of spectrum can provide a system some flexibility. Our society will gain substantial benefits, both in the short run and in the long run, from introduction of SOP sharing. This work will greatly improve the network performance, and have broad impact on the efficient usage of scarce spectrum resource in networks and furthermore, our society. This project is expected to improve the overall wireless spectral efficiency; enable wireless devices or systems to make full use of spectral resources in an autonomous and distributed manner; stimulate new applications to take full advantage of cognitive radios for better QoS; and provide an excellent vehicle for educating students with hands-on experience.