Former CWT student Tom Rondeau was named winner among candidates from all USA states of the Distinguished Dissertation Award in the field of Mathematics, Physical Science, and Engineering by the Council of Graduate Schools at its 2008 Awards Luncheon in Washington, DC.. Dr. Bostian attended the award luncheon.

Tom also was the ‘Outstanding Dissertation in Science and Engineering’ winner here at Virginia Tech at the graduate awards banquet on March 27, 2008.

Information about Distinguished Dissertation Award is available: http://www.cgsnet.org/Default.aspx?tabid=131

Smart Radio Challenge in SDR Forum 2008

CWT Won First place of Problem 1 in SDR Forum Smart Radio Challenge, Software Defined Radio Forum, Washington DC, October, 2008.

Feng (Andrew) Ge gave a presentation on “Software Defined Radio Execution Latency”

IEEE DySPAN 2008, Chicago, Illinois, 14-17 October 2008

Demonstration 1:
“A Heterogeneous Cognitive Radio Network Enabling Dissimilar Cooperative Spectrum Sensing, Dynamic Spectrum Access, Interoperability”

Demonstration 2:
“Dynamic Cellular Cognitive Radio: Rapidly Deployable Networking with DSA for Public Safety”

From left to right:
Qinqin Chen, Ying Wang, Sujit Nair, Dr. Charles W. Bostian,
Feng (Andrew) Ge, Almohanad Fayez, Mustafa Y. ElNainay

CWT (Center for Wireless Telecommunications) won the Grand prize in SDR Forum Smart Radio Challenge 2007. We developed a smart radio system that will automatically find available spectrum within a predefined band and transmit voice or data over that band.

From left to right: Dr. Charles W. Bostian, Ying Wang, Qinqin Chen, Feng (Andrew) Ge, Alex Young, Mark D. Silvius, Bruce Alan Fette

http://oceania.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=229855

http://www.ad-hoc-news.de/CorporateNews/en/14136646/SDR-Forum-Announces-Winners-of-Its-Inaugural-Smart-Radio

http://digitalproducer.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=229855

http://www.smartbrief.com/news/aaaa/industryBW-detail.jsp?id=162ABDF4-3997-40DD-9866-96561AC24BDC

http://www.je.st/news/Winners-Of-SDR-Forum-s-Smart-Radio-Challenge-Announced,640176.html

http://digital50.com/news/items/BW/2001/07/14/20071112005439/sdr-forum-announces-winners-of-its-inaugural-smart-radio-challenge-and-qualifying-tea.html

http://www.wirelessdesignonline.com/content/news/article.asp?docid=%7BDDBE3D72-BCAF-463C-B854-401A923732F2%7D

http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=73274883

http://www.einnews.com/search.php?keywords=SDR+Forum+Announces+Winners+of+Its+Smart+Radio+Challenge&makesearch=yes

See Dr.Charles Bostian’s Cognitive Radio presentation Cognitive Radio.

This month’s edition of Policy Tracker, the professional journal of spectrum management and policy, contains articles pertaining to DySPAN 2007 and cognitive radio. To view these articles, you will need a subscription to Policy Tracker; however, you can get a free trial of it here: http://www.policytracker.com/alerts.php?tact=553 (PDF) or http://feeds.feedburner.com/PolicyTracker (for the newsfeed).

The articles:

Momentum grows but blockages remain. Regulatory skepticism, opposition from legacy industries and a challenging business case make the whitespace proceedings in the US a crucial test for cognitive radio.

First ‘real world’ smart radio trials held in Ireland. The world's first simulation of how dynamic spectrum access technologies might work on a commercial basis have been held in Dublin.

We’re entering new territory…metaphorically speaking. We get a grasp on the ephemeral world of wireless communications through familiar metaphors. New research says this spells trouble for technologies like cognitive radio, which don't fit into existing frameworks.

Critics applaud Ofcom’s proposals for licence-exempt spectrum. The UK's regulator's blueprint for unlicensed frequencies has received a more positive response than previous proposals; however, some campaigners are concerned about the legal basis for regulating this type of spectrum usage.

Opinion: licence exempt studies holds global lessons. Research commissioned by the UK regulator demonstrates the economic value of the unlicensed approach, says Robert Horvitz of the Open Spectrum Foundation.

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

DySPAN, April 16-20, 2007

NIJ (Las Vegas), April 23-26, 2007

We are currently undergoing a restructuring of the webpage. Missing figures, links, or incorrect formatting will be fixed shortly.

VT is in the preliminary planning stages of a proposal for a network of cognitive radios with a very large number (>1000 nodes). The network nodes would be software defining radios running the VT cognitive engine, now under development with NSF and NIJ sponsorship. Our current projects are not supporting the development or operation of any kind of a test bed.

Charles Bostian heads the VT network effort and is the official point of contact for more information. Senior participating faculty members include Jeffrey Reed, Allen MacKenzie, and Luiz DaSilva. Other members of the project team have not yet been named. The process is in its very early stages and any discussion of sponsorship or of teaming arrangements is premature.

CWT’s Dr. Charles Bostian, Alumni Distinguished Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, presented a special seminar for faculty titled “An Opportunity to Build a Large-Scale Cognitive Wireless Network” on Tuesday, Jan. 24, from 3 to 5 p.m. in room 219 of the War Memorial Gym. An expanded version of the presentation, with some additional technical details, can be downloaded from the above link. (If you have difficulty displaying the presentation by clicking on the link, please try right-clicking or command-clicking on the link and selecting “Save As...”, then open the presentation locally.)

This special presentation is related to an anticipated funding opportunity involving a large (>1000 nodes) cognitive wireless network on the VT campus.

Dr. Bostian will describe his group’s current work in cognitive electronics and invite potential collaborators to join a proposal writing team.

The seminar is sponsored by the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science.

The following additional resources may be particularly useful to faculty members interested in the opportunity:

T. W. Rondeau, C. W. Bostian, D. Maldonado, A. Ferguson, S. Ball, S. F. Midkiff, B. Le, “Cognitive Radios in Public Safety and Spectrum Management,” 33rd Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy, Sept. 2005.
Download from TPRC

T. W. Rondeau, C. J. Rieser, B. Le, and C. W. Bostian, “Cognitive Radios with Genetic Algorithms: Intelligent Control of Software Defined Radios,” SDR Forum Technical Conference, Phoenix, 2004, pp. C-3 - C-8.
Download PDF

CWT’s Tutorial on Cognitive Engine
CWT’s Tutorial on GNU Radio

CWT’s Tutorial on genetic algorithms

CWT’s Tutorial on cognitive radio policy

The Center for Wireless Telecommunications launches its revised and improved Cognitive Radio web site.

The Center for Wireless Telecommunications is listed on the Virginia Tech homepage for its accomplishments in Cognitive Radio. Read the article here.

Fixed Radios
are set by their operators

Adaptive Radios
can adjust themselves to accommodate anticipated events

Cognitive Radios
can sense their environment and learn how to adapt

Cognitive radios are aware of their environment and intelligently adapt their performance to the user’s needs. A CR is a software defined radio with a “cognitive engine” brain. Conceptually, the cognitive engine responds to the operator’s commands by configuring the radio for whatever combinations of waveform, protocol, operating frequency, and networking are required. It monitors its own performance continuously, reading the radio’s outputs to determine the RF environment, channel conditions, link performance, etc., and adjusting the radio’s settings to deliver the needed quality of service subject to an appropriate combination of user requirements, operational limitations, and regulatory constraints. We call these processes “reading the radio’s meters” and “turning the radio’s knobs” for short.

Meeting these needs under real world economic, political, and commercial realities requires the development of affordable radios with (a) sufficient frequency and waveform agility to interoperate with any of the existing modulation formats, (b) the capability to serve as a gateway between two or more networks using incompatible modulations, and © the intelligence to find spectrum, configure themselves, and begin operation. Software defined radios (SDR) offer (a) and (b), since their operating frequencies and waveforms are software controlled, and switching between modulations and protocols simply requires running different code. Cognitive radios (CR) add the intelligence needed in © to SDR.

“This Web site is funded in part through a grant from the National Institute of Justice Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. Neither the U.S. Department of Justice nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse, this Web site (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided).”