| Summary: | In the current frequency allocation scheme, the radio spectrum is found to be heavily underutilized in time, frequency and space dimensions or any of their combination. To improve spectrum utilization, the unused contiguous or non-contiguous portion of the radio spectrum (spectrum hole) can be accessed opportunistically using cognitive radio technology provided it is interference free to the local users of the network. To reliably detect the spectrum holes, which is necessary to limit the interference, cognitive radio is required to have high time and frequency resolutions to detect radio technologies (e.g. GSM 900, 2.4 GHz WLAN) at the packet level in the transmitted channel to avoid misinterpretation of occupancy states in time and frequency. In addition, having high sensitivity and instantaneous dynamic range can enable cognitive radio to detect weak received signals and their detection in the presence of strong received signals. Besides these requirements, a large sensing bandwidth can increase the chances to find spectrum holes in multiple radio technologies concurrently. A chirp channel sounder receiver has been developed according to the aforementioned requirements with a bandwidth of 750 MHz to provide reliable detection of received signals in two frequency ranges; 1) 250 MHz to 1 GHz, 2) 2.2 GHz to 2.95 GHz. The developed receiver is capable of finding spectrum holes having a duration of 204.8 μs and a transmitted channel bandwidth up to 200 kHz. To explore the spectrum holes in the space dimensions, six chirp channel sounder receivers have been developed to form a homogeneous test-bed, which can be deployed and controlled independently. To experimentally validate the ability of the built receiver, short term spectrum occupancy measurements have been conducted to monitor 2.4 GHz WLAN traffic from a real wireless network to quantify the spectrum utilization and duration of spectrum holes in the time domain. It has been found that the radio spectrum is underutilized and empirical distribution of the duration of the spectrum hole can be modelled using lognormal and gamma distributions for prediction using a two state continuous time semi-Markov model. To experimentally validate the receiver’s capabilities in both the supported frequency ranges, long term spectrum occupancy measurements with 750 MHz sensing bandwidth have been performed and received signals have been detected at frame or packet level to quantify spectrum utilization. It has been found that the radio spectrum is highly underutilized at the measurement location and exhibits significant amount of spectrum holes in both time and frequency. To experimentally validate the functionalities of the homogeneous test-bed, short term spectrum occupancy have been performed to monitor 2.4 GHz WLAN traffic from a real wireless network. The experiment has been conducted using multiple receivers to quantify the amount of cooperation individual or multiple cognitive radio users can provide for reliable detection of spectrum holes in time, frequency and space. It has been found that the space dimension influences strongly the statistics of cooperation parameters.
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