Low-Cost Testbed Development and Its Applications in Cognitive Radio Prototyping

Abstract

Having a huge potential to improve the way radio spectrum is being used, the techniques that are used for the research in cognitive radio are maturing and therefore move from being evaluated in a simulation environment to more realistic environments such as dedicated testbeds. In this chapter we describe our experiences with the design, deployment and experimental use of the LOG-a-TEC embedded, outdoor cognitive radio testbed, based on the VESNA sensor node platform. We describe the choice of experimental low-cost reconfigurable radio frontends for LOG-a-TEC and discuss the potential capabilities of custom designs. The core part of this chapter gives practical experiences with designing the embedded testbed infrastructure, covering topology design and performance evaluation of the management network as well as our considerations in the choice of network protocols employed in the LOG-a-TEC testbed. Finally, we provide two use cases where the LOG-a-TEC testbed has been used for performing experiments with cognitive radio, one relevant to the investigation of coexistence of primary and secondary users in TV white spaces and the other addressing power allocation and interference control in the case of shared spectrum.