Engineering Commons^™

Wireless networks and information traffic have grown exponentially over the last decade. Consequently, an increase in demand of radio frequency bandwidth has resulted. Recent studies have shown that with the current fixed spectrum allocation, there are spectrum holes that are not utilized all the time by the licensed users while other frequency channels, such as Wi-Fi, are heavily used. To efficiently utilize the radio spectrum, cognitive radio stands to be a promising solution as it will be reconfigurable, self-aware and efficient. This research aims to develop techniques that will allow a cognitive radio system to enhance the radio’s decision-making capabilities …

In wireless communications, transmitted signals are distorted by noise, interference, path loss, and fading. Traditional communication systems include hardware based filters that are bulky, costly, and can filter only specific frequencies. Next generation communication systems, such as Cognitive Radios, will be reconfigurable and can dynamically adjust their parameters to filter any signal of any frequency. Therefore, this project aims to develop efficient reconfigurable algorithms for filters that meet the requirements of next generation communication systems.