Synopsis |
The CRABNET project aims at becoming a solid reference for innovative research on Cognitive Radio and Networks in the national and international contexts, thanks to the unique combination of scientific skills of partners in the project, ranging from physical layer design to network and application planning. The project also aims at guaranteeing a maximum visibility of the obtained results and achievements, by taking advantage of the current connections and interactions of project participants within the national and international research community, as well as by means of proper dissemination strategies. CRABNET is formed by top-notch Italian researchers, who are currently extremely active by participation, coordination, and leadership in the international community in the field of Cognitive Radio and Networking.
Lately, the research community has been devoting considerable attention to the Cognitive Radio and Network paradigm. Cognitive Radios and Networks are being developed in an effort to provide enhanced adaptability and re-configurability to overcome the common challenges of radio communications.
Cognitive Radio was first introduced by Joseph Mitola III and Gerald Maguire Jr [1]. Mitola III described Cognitive Radio in [1] as “the point in which wireless PDAs and related networks become, in computational terms, intelligent enough in regards to radio resources and communications between computers to be able to detect the eventual communication needs of the user as function of the user context and to respond to it by assigning the most adequate wireless services and radio resources right away”.
Mitola’s definition is one of wide scope: “Radio” here identifies any generic mobile terminal used for communication – smartphones, laptops or PDAs. Terminals are assumed to perform as intelligent agents: devices will need to observe the environment, evaluate possible strategies and make optimal decisions to satisfy user’s needs, while learning from past experiences. Nowadays, Cognitive Radio denotes spectrum-agile devices capable of performing Dynamic Spectrum Access: They must be efficient, cheap and able to operate in the fastest possible way, in order to adequately perform in a wireless scenario of constantly increasing complexity. This requirements imply a redefinition of the smart device and of its way of acting. In this regard, it is interesting to note that the “Radio” term in Cognitive Radio has been so far largely interpreted as strictly related to the lower-layer characteristics of wireless communications, in particular the physical (PHY) layer. This viable option requires, however, expensive devices characterized by very high computational capabilities.
CRABNET participants are aware of these aspects and will apply a cross-layer design approach to their investigations on Cognitive Radio, encouraging system classification procedures based on information regarding protocol layers above the physical one (PHY).
Cognitive Radio is rapidly extending to Cognitive Network, that, as formulated by Thomas et al. [2], may be considered as a an example of society: all networking devices interact to improve network performance and to analyze the characteristics of the operating radio environment. A network of smart devices has the potential to speed up all the basic aspects of the Cognitive Radio Paradigm, such as spectrum sensing, decision making, strategy selection, learning and automatic network recognition. Medium Access Control strategies based on cross-layer optimization algorithms also play an important role [4], [5], [6], [7].
Amongst the applications proposed by Mitola III in [1] we find spectrum pooling, offering mobile users the opportunity to negotiate spectrum access tailored to their communication needs and overcome licensing issues.
This application appears to be of great importance for current wireless scenarios: most of the available spectrum is already allocated to specific services, and - with the ever increasing demand for connectivity- spectrum availability could be one of the key challenges for the wireless world.
It is thus not surprising that nowadays, unlicensed bands, such as the 2.4 GHz ISM band, host several transmission protocols (802.11, Bluetooth, Zigbee and WiMAX, to name a few). As a result, Dynamic Spectrum Access and Network Identification Techniques have raised a growing interest, redifining the requirements of “Cognitive Radio” (as also stated on its formal definition by the Federal Communications Commission [3]). The 2.4 GHz ISM band will be considered in CRABNET as a very interesting case study to test the algorithms and solutions developed during the project.
In this continuously evolving framework the main scientific objective of the CRABNET project is the definition of algorithms and protocols specifically designed to provide the Cognitive Network with classification capabilities, enabling the possibility of identifying the transmission technologies actively present in the air interface. This research subject paves the way for a cognitive engine that, by means of the obtained information, can perform almost instantaneous decisions over multiple transmission parameters characterizing nodes belonging to different networks and operating in a crowded heterogeneous environment.
CRABNET will also benefit for dissemination of links with existing initiatives currently active in the European context. As a matter of fact, the proposer of CRABNET, Maria-Gabriella Di Benedetto is Chair of COST Action IC0902 "Cognitive Radio and Networking for Cooperative Coexistence of Heterogeneous Wireless Networks". The COST Action IC0902 involves about 150 researchers from almost 30 different countries throughout and outside Europe.The Action IC0902 is funded by the intergovernmental framework for European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Domain. The main objective of the COST Action IC0902 is to integrate the cognitive concept across all layers of communication systems, resulting in the definition of a European platform for Cognitive Radio and Networks.
CRABNET has the potential to play a leading role for innovative Cognitive Radio research in the Italian and European framework and to set the guidelines for a continuously growing research activity on the subject, even beyond project duration.
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