Software Radio-Based Decentralized Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks: A Prototype Design and Experimental Results

Significant progress has been made in the past few years on Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) wireless networks which seek to use RF spectrum more efficiently and dynamically. For example, many measurements of current spectrum utilization are available and theoretical analyses and computational simulations of DSA networks abound. In sharp contrast, few network systems, particularly those with a decentralized structure, have been built even at a small scale to investigate the performance, behavior, and dynamics of DSA networks. Our contribution is designing a decentralized and asynchronous DSA network and building a prototype based on software radio technologies, signal detection and classification methods, distributed cooperative spectrum sensing systems, and mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) protocols. This paper details the network''s design and implementation as well as its enabling technologies. Through systematic experiments, we identify several factors influencing performance for decentralized DSA networks.