[Discuss-gnuradio] Smart Radios, Cognitive Networks, GNU Radio

[Eric Blossom]

"Researchers to Help Smart Radios Form Cognitive Networks"
Virginia Tech News (09/19/05)

The National Science Foundation has awarded Virginia Tech's Center for
Wireless Telecommunications (CWT) a three-year grant to further its
cognitive radio effort to the point where the radios can share a
distributed knowledge base for individual and collective reasoning and
learning. The grant comes under the aegis of the NSF's NetS
Programmable Wireless Information Networks Program. CWT director and
electrical and computer engineering professor Charles Bostian
describes cognitive radios as "similar to living creatures in that
they are aware of their surroundings and understand their own and
their user's capabilities and the governing social constraints." He
says the first step is to train the radios to form into networks by
seeking others of their own kind and recognizing their environment,
and then teach the different cognitive radios to interact. The first
large-scale tests of cognition will be carried out by the CWT team in
a wireless network setting, and are expected to determine whether
cognitive methods can permit "Wi-Fi like" services in previously
unusable TV spectrums, among other things. Bostian says the
experiments will involve fully implementing a cognitive engine in any
wireless network, deploying cognitive engines within the GNU radio,
and practically evaluating cognitive wireless networks' advantages in
terms of performance. 

Full Article: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/514612/