CIF: Small: Dynamic Pricing of Interference in Cognitive Radio Networks

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

The telecommunications industry is on the verge of major structural change. Historically, the industry's regulator has allocated licenses for the utilization of well-defined bands within the available spectrum. Unlike other commodities, no secondary market for the spectrum has ever developed. Technological limitations as well as legal and regulatory constraints may have contributed to this fact. Today the evidence clearly points to a situation of relative under-utilization of the spectrum. A "cognitive radio network" (CRN) is a new paradigm for wireless communications aimed at enabling a more efficient use of the spectrum. This research project focuses on two significant technical and regulatory issues which must be resolved to ensure successful deployment of cognitive radio networks. The first issue relates to the network?s ability to manage interference in a distributed fashion without cooperation from the primary users. Here, the research tasks include the analysis, from a signal processing and algorithmic point of view, of various price-based schemes for dynamic spectrum allocation in a broad range of CRN scenarios under a variety of regulatory restrictions. The second relevant issue pertains to the design of a secondary market for the spectrum. The research investigates the analysis of various design choices taking into account specific spectrum sharing techniques and the associated behavior of sellers (i.e. primary users/primary network service providers (NSP)) and buyers (i.e. cognitive users). The proposed work targets new models to (i) facilitate distributed spectrum sharing and spectrum decision in a broad range of CRN, and to (ii) provide additional insights into the operation of a secondary spectrum market which could prove useful for regulatory design.