GEDC Demonstrates Complete Cognitive Radio System Testbed

Dr. Wangmyong Woo and Dr. Youngsik Hur demonstrate the mesurement systems in the GEDC Cognitive Radio Testbed.

ATLANTA (April 25, 2006) — During the recent the April 24-25 Spring Review at the Georgia Electronic Design Center, the Georgia Institute of Technology presented a demonstration of the world's first complete Cognitive Radio (CR) Testbed.

GEDC recently developed the ground-breaking CR testbed at their headquarters in the Technology Square Research Building at Georgia Tech.

The CR testbed's purpose is to develop and evaluate:

• spectrum sensing technology, which is the most critical technology in CR,
• innovative communication systems, and
• RF/Analog circuits and systems.

CR technology is under consideration as an effective way to exploit limited bandwidth resources in the United States and elsewhere. A CR system uses "opportunistic spectrum sharing" over a wide frequency range that covers multiple communication standards — allowing coexistence among heterogeneous wireless networks such as cellular, wireless PAN, wireless LAN, and wireless MAN, as well as TV broadcasting.

The result is a wireless technology that optimizes increasingly crowded spectrum resources by finding and utilizing unoccupied frequencies.

All of the functional blocks in the testbed system, including signal generation and MODEM and RF/Analog front ends, are designed to be operated by integrated S/W for acceleration of response/test time, as well as for ease of management and expansion and for spectrum sensing technology. The system is capable of instant testing and evaluation of the algorithm level of the communication system and of the RF/Analog IC.

The GEDC demo was divided into two main segments. Presenters outlined the CR concept for onlookers, and then previewed two sensing methods — multi-resolution spectrum sensing and analog auto-correlation.

A number of companies, including Agilent, Motorola and Intel, attended the demonstrations and expressed interest in the program.

The CR Testbed demonstration delivered during the Spring Review is also scheduled to be presented at the next IEEE 802.22 Standards meeting.

GEDC, teamed with the Samsung RFIC Design Center, has already made a proposal on the best approach to spectrum-sensing technology. This proposal was made in November to the IEEE 802.22 group that is working on establishing the first CR-oriented communication standard.