Cognitive Radio - Terminology

Terminology

Depending on transmission and reception parameters, there are two main types of cognitive radio:

• Full Cognitive Radio (Mitola radio), in which every possible parameter observable by a wireless node (or network) is considered.
• Spectrum-Sensing Cognitive Radio, in which only the radio-frequency spectrum is considered.

Other types are dependent on parts of the spectrum available for cognitive radio:

• Licensed-Band Cognitive Radio, capable of using bands assigned to licensed users (except for unlicensed bands, such as the U-NII band or the ISM band. The IEEE 802.22 working group is developing a standard for wireless regional area network (WRAN), which will operate on unused television channels.
• Unlicensed-Band Cognitive Radio, which can only utilize unlicensed parts of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum. One such system is described in the IEEE 802.15 Task Group 2 specifications, which focus on the coexistence of IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth.
• Spectrum mobility: Process by which a cognitive-radio user changes its frequency of operation. Cognitive-radio networks aim to use the spectrum in a dynamic manner by allowing radio terminals to operate in the best available frequency band, maintaining seamless communication requirements during transitions to better spectrum.
• Spectrum sharing: Provides a fair spectrum-scheduling method; a major challenge to open-spectrum usage. It may be regarded as similar to generic media access control (MAC) problems in existing systems.