Cognitive radio: Making software radios more personal

Abstract

Software radiosare emerging as platforms for multibandmultimode personal communications systems. Radio etiquette is the set of RF bands, air interfaces, protocols, and spatial and temporal patterns that moderate the use of the radio spectrum. Cognitive radio extends the software radio withradio-domain model-based reasoning about such etiquettes. Cognitive radio enhances the flexibility of personalservices through a Radio Knowledge Representation Language. This language representsknowledge of radio etiquette, devices, software modules, propagation, networks, user needs, and application scenarios in a way that supportsautomated reasoning about the needs of the user. This empowers software radios to conductexpressive negotiations amongpeers about the use of radio spectrum acrossfluentsof space, time, and user context. WithRKRL, cognitive radio agentsmay actively manipulate the protocol stackto adapt known etiquettes to better satisfy the user’s needs. This transforms radio nodes from blindexecutors of predefined protocols to radio-domain-aware intelligent agents that search out ways to deliver the services the user wantsevenif that user does not knowhowto obtain them. Software radio [1] provides an ideal platform for the realization of cognitive radio.