Rapid proliferation of wireless applications/devices will inevitably exhaust the wireless spectral resource, thus calling for more flexible and adaptive spectrum-management policies and network architectures that make best of emerging programmable radio devices.
This project is addressing this challenge by developing a distributed, adaptive network architecture that enables dynamic and efficient utilization of the wireless spectrum. It focuses on key functionality including spectrum-availability monitoring, spectrum-access control, and spectrum-use coordination. Specifically, the main project tasks are: (a) development of an adaptive, lightweight algorithm for real-time monitoring and characterization of spectral resources, (b) development of an adaptive network architecture as well as distributed, cross-layer coordination algorithms for dynamic spectrum utilization, (c) establishment of an analytical framework for, and development of the performance benchmarks of, spectral-agile wireless networks, and (d) evaluation of the performance of the above architecture and algorithms via modeling, simulation, and experimentation on a testbed built with off-the-shelf radio devices.
This project is expected to (1) improve the overall wireless spectral efficiency, (2) enable unlicensed band wireless devices or systems to make full use of spectral resources in an autonomous and distributed manner, (3) provide regulatory parties guidelines to establish efficient, dynamic spectrum-management policies, (4) stimulate new applications to take full advantage of intelligent, programmable radios for better quality-of-service, and (5) provide an excellent vehicle for educating students with hands-on experience. The project results will also be disseminated to industry and academia through high-quality publications and distribution of the prototype implementations via Internet and other venues.
