Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

During the past couple of decades, all the research efforts have focused on improving the performance ofwireless communication systems under the static frequency allocation. While these activities have led tonumerous breakthroughs and inventions, they all ignore the remarkable gains that can be achieved if the unusedportions of the radio spectrum can be used at proper times and/or locations to serve other (secondary) users inthe network. Recently a flurry of research has targeted the so-called dynamic spectrum access schemes aimingto improve the under-utilization of radio spectrum. The majority of these activities are currently going on in theUS. To preserve the leading role of Canadian institutions, researchers, and companies in the field of AdvancedCommunications and Management of Information, NSERC has indentified the importance of the subtopic ofDynamic Spectrum Allocation within two topics, namely Ubiquitous Networks and Adaptive/CognitiveNetworks. We bring our expertise in Intelligent Signal Processing (which has also been identified by NSERCas another subtopic within both aforementioned topics) to this NSERC Strategic Project Grant proposal. Wedevelop a new technology solution combining wireless cellular network with local broadband access thatexploits the unused portions of TV spectrum through the dynamic spectrum access technique. The currentcellular infrastructure has been designed to perform efficient spectrum allocation for potentially highly mobileusers. As such, it may not be efficient under low-mobility or stationary environment. This project addresses theabove shortcoming of the conventional cellular networks by developing a new system solution that adaptivelyconnects the user to the infrastructure through one of the two networking modes, namely low-ratehigh-mobility access or high-rate low-mobility access. We explore the potentials of dynamic spectrummanagement for the later access solution to seamlessly integrate these two schemes.