A prototype cognitive radio architecture for TVWS exploitation under the real time secondary spectrum market policy

This paper elaborates on the design and implementation of a prototype system architecture enabling for TVWS exploitation by LTE Advanced systems, under the real time secondary spectrum market policy. It describes a centralised infrastructure-based cognitive radio network, where dynamic TVWS allocation among unlicensed systems is administrated by a spectrum broker, carrying out radio-resource management and spectrum trading in real time. For efficient system performance as a matter of both maximum-possible radio resource exploitation and trading revenue, the paper discusses the design and implementation of a prototype mechanism at the spectrum broker side, which exploits backtracking algorithm for obtaining the best-matching solution. Performance evaluation experiments carried-out under controlled conditions (i.e. simulation) verified the validity of the proposed architecture, besides establishing its capacity for maximum spectrum utilisation and minimum fragmentation under a fixed-price trading policy.