THE ROLE OF THE COGNITIVE RADIO PARADIGM IN FUTURE WIRELESS NETWORKS

This thesis work faces and solves problems related to the network access design and to the performances optimization in Cognitive Radio wireless networks; in fact this type of innovative networks, which foresees the reuse of licensed spectrum bands by secondary users, i.e. users holding no license, places new challenges in the design of protocol stacks in a cross-layer fashion. The time varying primary users’ activity, as well as their mobility, make the topology of the secondary network being time-varying too and, in particular, the thesis is focused on aspects related to the routing procedure and the optimization of the sensing time. Moreover a case of particular interest has been studied where the integration between the Smart Grid and Cognitive Radio paradigm is addressed. More in detail the Smart Grid context needs that the nodes, which are part of it, can exchange communication each other: to answer this need the Cognitive Radio has been highlighted as an ideal candidate