Who is Smarter? Intelligence Measure of Learning-based Cognitive Radios

Cognitive radio (CR) is considered as a key enabling technology for dynamic spectrum access to improve spectrum efficiency. Although the CR concept was invented with the core idea of realizing “cognition”, the research on measuring CR cognitive capabilities and intelligence is largely open. Deriving the intelligence measure of CR not only can lead to the development of new CR technologies, but also makes it possible to better configure the networks by integrating CRs with different cognitive capabilities. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a data-driven methodology to quantitatively measure the intelligence factors of the CR with learning capabilities. The basic idea of our methodology is to run various tests on the CR in different spectrum environments under different settings and obtain various performance data on different metrics. Then we apply factor analysis on the performance data to identify and quantize the intelligence factors and cognitive capabilities of the CR. More specifically, we present a case study consisting of 144 different types of CRs. The CRs are different in terms of learning-based dynamic spectrum access strategies, number of sensors, sensing accuracy, processing speed, and algorithmic complexity. Five intelligence factors are identified for the CRs through our data analysis. We show that these factors comply well with the nature of the tested CRs, which validates the proposed intelligence measure methodology.