Simulation platform for opportunistic radio systems

Abstract

Although spectrum is usually considered a scarce resource, measurements have shown that most assigned spectrum is under utilized, and considerable spectrum would be available it both dimensions: space and time are considered in the spectrum management and planning. In most cases there is a spectrum access problem rather than a spectrum shortage. The development ot policy agile terminals that can sense holes in used spectrum and adapt their transmission characteristics to use these holes will provide one tool to address and take advantage ot spectrum under-utilization. In this communication we describe the development ot a simulation tool that addresses the goal of performance evaluation and assessment ot such systems in a coexistence environment with primary cellular networks. The communication presents the main features ot the tool, discusses and proposes metrics to evaluate the capabilities ot the secondary opportunistic networks, and presents illustrative simulation results. These show that even with moderate to high loads in the primary cellular networks, a moderately number of frequencies will allow the deployment ot opportunistic radio networks with very small blocking probabilities.