Spectrum Challenges and Solutions by Cognitive Radio: An Overview

This paper provides an overview of major problems that are confronting wireless communication with regard to spectrum use in general i.e. by all sectors, government, private, other telecom service providers and military communication. It is commonly believed that there is a crisis of spectrum availability due to tremendous growth in the wireless based systems and the evolution of the radio communication technologies. In fact, there is no shortage of radio spectrum, only a dearth of affordable communications infrastructure. There is potential to make considerably better usage of the radio-spectrum. There are many areas of the radio spectrum which are not fully utilized. Cognitive radios (CR) have been proposed as a way to reuse this underutilized spectrum in an opportunistic manner. A CR is an autonomous unit in a communications environment that senses its environment, tracks changes, and reacts upon its findings and frequently exchanges information with the networks. We show the how the radio frequency is being managed in India and what India is doing to face the challenges to improve the spectrum management. The radio Communication Assembly of ITU is also studying the plan for implementation of CR systems including technical and regulatory issues.