A Software-defined Radio Prototyping Platform for Cognitive Radio Applications

During the last decades, the demand for higher data rates in wireless communication systems grew steadily. While the number of communication systems increased significantly, the amount of available spectral resources has remained constant. To exploit spectral resources more efficiently, cognitive radio concepts have become of utmost interest. The goal of cognitive radio systems is to sense the system’s immediate environment and react upon its findings. Thereby, non-occupied frequency bands can be identified and used for data transmission. To allow the adaptation of a communication system to the outcomes of the sensing operation, a software-defined radio architecture is advantageous. Systems based on a software-defined radio architecture enable the reconfiguration of software defining the physical as well as the media access control layer. Within this manuscript, a software-defined radio prototyping platform developed by the authors is presented. It is ideally suited for rapid prototyping of wireless communication transceivers with cognitive radio functionality. A realization concept for a cognitive radio demonstrator is given for a TV white space application where non-occupied frequency ranges within the UHF band primarily used for TV broadcasting are sensed. Dynamically, the non-occupied frequency bands are then accessed for data transmission based on an IEEE 802.11 system.