A Low-Cost ISM-Band Multi-Transceiver Cognitive Radio

TL;DR

This paper introduces a low-cost, multi-transceiver cognitive radio platform operating in ISM bands, enabling efficient spectrum use and applications like smart-city Wi-Fi infrastructure.

Contribution

It presents a novel affordable hardware platform for cognitive radio using off-the-shelf components and free ISM bands, with a concurrent multi-spectrum protocol.

Findings

Cost-effective hardware implementation

Achieved optimized throughput and latency

Demonstrated smart-city application feasibility

Abstract

A Cognitive Radio is a type of Software-Defined Radio (SDR) that automatically detects available wireless spectrum and adjusts its physical hardware, modulation, or protocol parameters to obtain optimal throughput, latency, and range. Much of prior Cognitive Radio research and design has required expensive transceivers using licensed bands that are not openly available for use by unlicensed users. This thesis presents a low-cost hardware platform built from off-the-shelf components that utilizes free to use Industrial, Scientific, and Medical (ISM) bands, and implements a concurrent multi-spectrum point-to-point wireless protocol optimized for non-stationary devices. Performance metrics such as cost, latency, throughput, and range are measured and analyzed. Applications of such a wireless implementation are proposed and implemented, such as smart-city infrastructure that allows internet connectivity to inner-city users by providing Wi-Fi Access Points through mobile On-Board Unit (OBU) devices with uplinks delivered from stationary Roadside Unit (RSU) devices.