Spectral Occupancy Measurements in Urban Areas and Their Applicability to the Blind Standard Recognition Sensor Concept

Cognitive Radio (CR) has been paid much attention in both academic and industrial domains during the last years for its potential capability to solve to the so-called spectrum scarcity problem. The CR concept arose as a result of the current spectrum underutilization, which was demonstrated in a number of spectrum measurement campaigns. The main objective of such measurements was to evaluate spectrum occupancy, and hence empirical data were employed mainly to determine whether spectral bands were occupied or not. Empirical spectrum measurements can find however further practical applications. In this context, this paper presents some spectrum measurements that have been performed in the framework of a broadband spectrum measurement campaign and presents the Blind Standard Recognition Sensor (BSRS) concept, which can be validated with such measurements. The BSRS is a sensor embedded in a CR equipment to permit the identification of many commercial wireless standards without the need to connect to any network.