Rave revolution in the society: Cognitive Radio Technology

As the name rightly suggests, the technology making everyone go bonkers is the Cognitive Radio Technology, which is cognizant of its environment and adjusts accordingly. For the starters and layman, it is a technology that utilizes the unused frequencies in the air, or if no frequency is free to be used, it chooses to share it with others in a friendly zone.

The concept of Cognitive Radio Technology was coined by Maguire Jr. in 1999 officially. Before that, one frequency was allotted to one radio station as there were lesser radio stations then. With ever increasing numbers of radio frequencies in the present era, cognitive technology has become a smarter way of dealing with the exhaustion. This radio frequency recognizes the unused or partially used bandwidths and switch to them when they find favorable conditions. This is a smart way of altering the internal and external radio environments. It is used widely with the personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other communication networks. This not only enables the radio spectrum to be utilized to the optimum level, but also avoids the interference of unauthorized users. The spectrums allotted to email and pagers are relatively free and often offer unused space for the cognitive radio to fit in.

Defense services have invested a great deal of money in cognitive radio technology. In the Iraq war, reportedly, the amount of time taken in radio frequencies negotiations with other governments was as much as it took for the US troops to get there. Now, even the commercial sector has stepped into it recognizing the potential of the technology. Making its foray into the arena of TV a couple of years back, there is an outburst of opportunities in the present day broadcasting industry. Till date, government has been dividing the radio spectrum and then distributed licenses of it to various broadcasters and companies. Now they are concentrating on more sophisticated system called spectrum sensing. The Cognitive radio will sense the unused spectrum and will share it without posing any interference to it.

This all sounds too good until it meets the usual resistance from people who have paid for their prime spectrum. Their individual concerns raise above that of the community and they fear the inferior functioning posed by the spectrum due to the interference of cognitive radio. In such cases, they are close to sharing. Hence, the technology is being met with some challenges at the moment and the government is at work to devise out laws for it.

The cognitive radio technology functions in an orderly manner. It is like a customer in a café searching for a free table. It first recognizes the unused spectrum and then checks if it can be used on a sharing basis. This also includes checking whether the interference caused would be harmful to the primary user. It chooses the best of all the spectrum options available based upon the need of communication mode. Then it analyses the quality requirement and makes the final choice on spectrum.

Cognitive radio senses the environment of the spectrum and checks if the space available is enough for its requirement. In some conditions, it chooses to work on one spectrum and then, as and when the need arises, it selects another favorable spectrum to make a transition. This transition has to be smooth so that the user can have a continuous signal transmission. In developing nations, this technology is being pushed to the limit. As this is going to be the language of next generation, the USA is looking forward to promoting it for public safety services.

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