Biologically inspired dynamic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks

Abstract

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising wireless communication technology that aims to detect temporally unused spectrum bands by sensing its radio environment and communicate over these spectrum bands in order to enhance overall spectrum utilization. These objectives pose difficulties and have additional requirements such as self-organizing, self-adaptation, and scalability over conventional communication paradigms. Therefore, it is imperative to develop new communication models and algorithms. In nature, as a result of the natural evolution, biological systems have acquired great capabilities, which can be modeled and adopted for addressing the challenges in the CR domain. In this chapter, we explore the surprising similarities and mapping between cognitive radio network (CRN) architectures and natural biological systems. We introduce potential solution avenues from the biological systems toward addressing the challenges of CRN such as spectrum sensing, spectrum management, spectrum sharing, and spectrum mobility/handoff management. The objective of this chapter is to serve as a roadmap for the development of efficient scalable, adaptive, and self-organizing bio-inspired communication techniques for dynamic spectrum access in CRN architectures.