Spectrum Occupancy Analysis for Cognitive Radio Zhe Wang, Electronics Group

By current spectrum allocation strategies, the vast majority of the frequency spectrum is licensed to different organizations. However, observations provide evidence that usage of the licensed spectrum is by far not equilibrium neither in the time domain nor the spatial domain. Cognitive radio, which can sense its environment and location and then alter its frequency, modulation and other param-eters so as to dynamically reuse available spectrum, could break the current spectrum availability bottleneck. The fundamental aspect to the success of such technology is the statistical properties of the spectrum occupancy, which forms the basis of the current project. 2. Why? In the 3G licence auction 2000, bids reached as high as £22.478 billion for 155Mhz spectrum. On the other hand, according the report of the Shared Spectrum Company [1], The maximum total spectrum occupancy is only 13.1 % in New York City. Cognitive radio based on the software defined radio shows great promise to solve the inefficient frequency use problems. Many organizations such as communication regulatory body, university and military have invested millions of money in this technology. The fundamental aspect to the success of such technology is the statistical properties of the spectrum occupancy, which forms the basis of the current project. While the database of Ofco