Cognitive radio has been an active research area in wireless communications over the past 10 years. TV Digital Switch Over resulted in new regulatory regimes, which offer the first large-scale opportunity for cognitive radio and networks. This article considers the most recent regulatory rules for TV White Space opportunistic usage, and proposes technologies to operate in these bands. It addresses techniques to assess channel vacancy by the cognitive radio, focusing on the two incumbent systems of the TV bands, namely TV stations and wireless microphones. Spectrum-sensing performance is discussed under TV White Space regulation parameters. Then, modulation schemes for the opportunistic radio are discussed, showing the limitations of classical multi-carrier techniques and the advantages of filter bank modulations. In particular, the low adjacent band leakage of filter bank is addressed, and its benefit for spectrum pooling is stressed as a means to offer broadband access through channel aggregation.

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ISSN : 1939-8018 (Print) 1939-8115 (Online)In the field of Software Radio (SWR), parameterization studies have become a very important topic. This is mainly because parameterization will probably decrease the size of the software to be downloaded, and also because it will limit the reconfiguration time. In this paper, parameterization is considered as a digital radio design methodology. Two different techniques, namely common functions and common operators are considered. In this paper, the second view is developed and illustrated by two examples: the well known Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and the proposed Reconfigurable Linear Feedback Shift Register (R-LFSR), derived from the classical Linear Feedback Shift Register (LFSR) structure

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Filterbank multicarrier modulation (FBMC) has been identified as a strong contender for dynamic spectrum access in the TV White Space, as FBMC transceivers are able to control out-of-band interference level without compromising flexible usage. This paper compares FBMC receiver architectures, providing performance and complexity analysis, based on closed form expressions and on an actual implementation. Polyphase network (PPN-) and frequency spreading (FS-) FBMC receiver structures are discussed. The FS-FBMC structure is selected for hardware implementation and compared with OFDM. It is shown that complexity overhead is limited when hardware resource sharing techniques are exploited.

Abstract-Regulators around the world are currently setting rules and requirements that will allow for mass-market access to TV White Spaces. It is expected that the opening of those frequency bands to the consumer market will lead to a dramatic increase of spectrum exploitation efficiency in highly appealing frequency bands: In Europe, the frequency bands between 470 MHz and 790 MHz are considered and the inherent signal propagation properties are largely superior to those in standard cellular bands, for example, in 900 MHz and 2 GHz. This paper will present related use cases for the exploitation of TV White Space as they are currently discussed in the ETSI Reconfigurable Radio Systems Technical Committee. Then, the availability of TV White Spaces in Europe is investigated, followed by an overview of recent regulatory activities on the European Commission level. In particular, expectations related to a new revision of the European R&TTE Directive are presented which represents the basic regulatory framework in Europe.

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