Spectrum Intelligence for Interference Mitigation for Cognitive Radio Terminals

Cognitive Radio (CR) is defined as a radio that is aware of its surroundings and adapts intelligently. While CR technology is mainly cited as the enabler for solving the spectrum scarcity problems by the means of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA), perspectives and potential applications of the CR technology far surpass the DSA alone. For example, cognitive capabilities and on-the-fly reconfiguration abilities of CRs constitute an important next step in the Communication Electronic Warfare (CEW). They may enable the jamming entities with the capabilities of devising and deploying advanced jamming tactics. Analogously, they may also aid the development of the advanced intelligent self-reconfigurable systems for jamming mitigation. This work outlines the development and implementation of the Spectrum Intelligence algorithm for Radio Frequency (RF) interference mitigation. The developed system is built upon the ideas of obtaining relevant spectrum-related data by using wideband energy detectors, performing narrowband waveform identification and extracting the waveforms’ parameters. The recognized relevant spectrum activities are then continuously monitored and stored. Coupled with the self-reconfigurability of various transmission-related parameters, the Spectrum Intelligence is the facilitator for the advanced interference mitigation strategies. The implementation is done on the Cognitive Radio coaxial test bed architecture which consists of two Software Defined Radio terminals, each interconnected with the computationally powerful System-on-Module (SoM).