Tutorials

"Cognitive Radios and Wireless Networks"
by Petri Mähönen, Marina Petrova

Abstract

This tutorial starts by giving a brief historical background on the cognitive radios. We describe what is meant by spectrum agile radios and by full cognitive radios ("Mitola Radios"). We explain the difference between spectrum agile (DSA) and full context‐sensitive cognitive radios. The tutorial also explains some of the recent results that have been derived from recent measurement campaigns by the tutorial speakers and others.
From cognitive radios we then move on to basic concepts of cognitive wireless networks. The emphasis will be on covering recent research results and remaining key research challenges towards creation of such networks. We cover briefly game theory and other classical approaches, but our focus here will be on the use of metaheuristics and machine learning algorithms for full cross‐layer and network wide optimization. We shall also discuss in some detail applications of topology and geometry information in the optimization process. As a part of the discussion, a brief introduction to modern spatial statistics techniques will be provided.
The tutorial is emphasizing architectural concepts and emerging new methodologies. The tutorial also provides attendees with knowledge of the most important concepts and open research questions in this emerging field. As such it is also suited for beginning graduate students.

Biography

Petri Mähönen is currently a full professor and holds Ericsson Chair of Wireless Networks at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He has studied and worked in the United States, United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Before joining to RWTH Aachen in 2002, he was a research director and professor at the Centre for Wireless Communications and the University of Oulu, Finland. He has been a principal investigator in several international research projects, including initiating and leading several large European Union research projects. Dr. Mähönen has published ca. 200 papers in international journals and conferences and has been invited to deliver research talks at many universities, companies and conferences. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and fellow of RAS. He is inventor or co‐inventor for over 20 patents or patent applications. He has been particularly active in cognitive wireless network research and has been serving in different roles in relevant cognitive communications domain conferences, such as DySPAN, CogNet and CrownCom. He is serving as co‐chair for DySPAN 2010 TPC. He has been also guest‐editor for several special issues in the field. He is currently also a research area coordinator and one of the principal investigators for a newly formed Ultra High Speed Mobile Information and Communication (UMIC) research cluster at RWTH, which is one of the German national excellence clusters supported by the Federal Government of Germany. One of the key‐research domains in UMIC cluster is also cognitive radio network technologies.

Marina Petrova works as a chief research scientist at the Department of Wireless Networks at the RWTH Aachen University. She graduated in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering from the University of St. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, Macedonia. Her research interests are focused on cognitive wireless networks, cognitive radios and adaptive wireless systems technologies. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis work at the RWTH Aachen has been also the multi‐parameter optimization methods for cognitive radio networks. As part of her research work she has participated in the several international cooperative projects and industry projects in the field of wireless communications and cognitive radios. In Aachen she has also lead the research work that has been done towards the prototype implementation of gnu Radio based cognitive resource manager for cognitive radios. She has also served in technical program and organizing committees of conferences, among those IEEE DySPAN, IEEE Crowncom, the leading conferences in the field of cognitive radios and networks.