EAGER: SC2: A Universal Spectral Language for Blind Rendezvous in Open Spectrum Cognitive Intelligent Radio Networks

Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville TN

Investigators

Abstract

The wireless infrastructure of the United States is often considered key to the country's economic prosperity and national security. The data rate per link has increased exponentially over the last 20 years and is expected to continue to do so into the future if the problem of congested radio frequency spectrum can be solved. Paradoxically, the issue of congested licensed wireless spectrum, in modern networks, is at odds with the sparsity of the entire spectrum usage - as little as 10% use at any given moment. One possibility for next-generation wireless is to employ cognitive intelligent radios that can "socially" share the wireless spectrum without disruption of preexisting systems in hopes of increasing the overall usage of available spectrum. These intelligent radios will weave through spectral "traffic" as one might envision autonomous vehicles doing someday in the near future; however, unlike vehicles, two of these intelligent radios must meet somewhere in spectrum in order to form a link. This work proposes a universal spectral language to enable rendezvous of cognitive intelligent radios. The objective of this project will be to create such a language where any wireless device that can sense or "look" at spectrum can also communicate via spectrum. This approach is a passive and noninvasive method for spectrum usage optimization with device-to-device communication. The universal language lets heterogeneous devices form networks and mismatched networks share the spectrum without centralized control. This intelligent cognition causes conflict among users and networks which affects efficient and fair spectrum access similar to the human behavior. The behavior of autonomous networks can then mimic this social behavior, leading to a possible solution to sharing spectrum. The algorithms developed on this project will foster a new wireless environment that mimics stable social behavior, using cognitive intelligent radios and universal communication that can lead naturally to intelligent and social solutions to network spectrum sharing.