Cognitive radio on a reconfigurable MPSoC platform

Due to the explosive growth of wireless communication, the demands for\ud radio spectrum are rapidly increasing. It is very di±cult to accommodate\ud new wireless services under the current spectrum allocation scheme. On\ud the other hand, the allocated spectrum is not e±ciently utilized. Cognitive\ud Radio is proposed as a technology to solve the imbalance between spectrum\ud scarcity and spectrum under-utilization. Spectrum utilization can be im-\ud proved by making it possible for a user who does not have the license for\ud spectrum (secondary user) to access the spectrum which is not occupied by\ud the licensed user (primary user). This secondary user has the awareness of\ud the spectrum and adapts its transmission accordingly on a non-interference\ud basis. This spectrum access and awareness scheme is referred to as Cogni-\ud tive Radio. The idea is also known as Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) or\ud Open Spectrum Access (OSA). Cognitive Radio is seen as the ¯nal point\ud of software defined radio (SDR) platform evolution. A fully °exible and\ud e±cient software defined radio platform will be the enabling technology for\ud Cognitive Radio. Cognitive Radio imposes a number of requirements on\ud the processing platform such as °exibility, energy e±ciency and guaranteed\ud throughput/latency. The trend in the implementation of SDR is moving\ud towards Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC) platforms.\ud The work of this PhD thesis is part of the Ad-hoc Adaptive Freeband\ud (AAF) project. The aim of the AAF project is to design a Cognitive Radio\ud based wireless ad-hoc network for emergency situations. Although the AAF\ud project addresses Cognitive Radio in a holistic fashion from physical layer to\ud networking issues, the work of this thesis mainly focuses on the design of the\ud adaptive physical layer (baseband processing). The physical layer consid-\ud ered in this thesis mainly consists of two parts: transmission and spectrum\ud sensing. A reconfigurable MPSoC platform is used to support the adap-\ud tive baseband processing of Cognitive Radio. A coarse-grain recon¯gurable\ud processor called the Montium, developed at the University of Twente, is\ud considered in this thesis as a key element of the proposed MPSoC platform

Cognitive Radio for Emergency Networks

In the scope of the Adaptive Ad-hoc Freeband (AAF) project, an emergency network built on top of Cognitive Radio is proposed to alleviate the spectrum shortage problem which is the major limitation for emergency networks. Cognitive Radio has been proposed as a promising technology to solve todayâ?~B??~D?s spectrum scarcity problem by allowing a secondary user in the non-used parts of the spectrum that aactully are assigned to primary services. Cognitive Radio has to work in different frequency bands and various wireless channels and supports multimedia services. A heterogenous reconfigurable System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture is proposed to enable the evolution from the traditional software defined radio to Cognitive Radio

Spectrum sharing security and attacks in CRNs: a review

Cognitive Radio plays a major part in communication technology by resolving the shortage of the spectrum through usage of dynamic spectrum access and artificial intelligence characteristics. The element of spectrum sharing in cognitive radio is a fundament al approach in utilising free channels. Cooperatively communicating cognitive radio devices use the common control channel of the cognitive radio medium access control to achieve spectrum sharing. Thus, the common control channel and consequently spectrum sharing security are vital to ensuring security in the subsequent data communication among cognitive radio nodes. In addition to well known security problems in wireless networks, cognitive radio networks introduce new classes of security threats and challenges, such as licensed user emulation attacks in spectrum sensing and misbehaviours in the common control channel transactions, which degrade the overall network operation and performance. This review paper briefly presents the known threats and attacks in wireless networks before it looks into the concept of cognitive radio and its main functionality. The paper then mainly focuses on spectrum sharing security and its related challenges. Since spectrum sharing is enabled through usage of the common control channel, more attention is paid to the security of the common control channel by looking into its security threats as well as protection and detection mechanisms. Finally, the pros and cons as well as the comparisons of different CR - specific security mechanisms are presented with some open research issues and challenges