A Cognitive Approach to the Detection of Spectrum Holes in Wireless Networks
Tobias Renk, C. Kloeck, Friedrich K. Jondral · 2007
The experience of ubiquitous and seamless ac- cess to heterogeneous mobile communication networks is one of the core issues of today's research. This comes along with an increasing demand in bandwidth. However, bandwidth as a natural resource is limited by technical constraints and, as several measurements have shown, is currently used very in- efficiently due to a static allocation. Consequently, we have to consider spectrum allocation techniques and employ use- ful applications for the detection of vacant frequency bands. In this paper, we present a novel, swarm-behavior based ap- proach for the detection of spectrum holes in cognitive wire- less networks. It is based on the fact that several cogni- tive radios form a cognitive network. This network is then split up into several cognitive sub-networks that collaborate among each other and scan the frequency range simultane- ously. Thus, several vacant frequency bands can be found and the overall processing time can be reduced. In addition, fading effects due to multi-path propagation can be met in a more efficient way.