Advances in opportunistic radio technologies for TVWS

Cognitive radio has been an active research area in wireless communications over the past 10 years. TV Digital Switch Over resulted in new regulatory regimes, which offer the first large-scale opportunity for cognitive radio and networks. This article considers the most recent regulatory rules for TV White Space opportunistic usage, and proposes technologies to operate in these bands. It addresses techniques to assess channel vacancy by the cognitive radio, focusing on the two incumbent systems of the TV bands, namely TV stations and wireless microphones. Spectrum-sensing performance is discussed under TV White Space regulation parameters. Then, modulation schemes for the opportunistic radio are discussed, showing the limitations of classical multi-carrier techniques and the advantages of filter bank modulations. In particular, the low adjacent band leakage of filter bank is addressed, and its benefit for spectrum pooling is stressed as a means to offer broadband access through channel aggregation.