Periodic Report Summary 2 - PAR4CR (Partnership for the Development of Cognitive Radio)
Project Context and Objectives:
As more devices “go wireless” and human wireless networks proliferate at unprecedented speed, more bandwidth and better use of the RF spectrum will be required to avoid future “wireless traffic jams”. In this context the realization of cognitive radio (CR) is essential to meet the requirements of future wireless communication infrastructures. Software defined radio (SDR) should be an enabling technology on the path towards CR. For these reasons selected European Universities and Industrial Companies have organized a partnership in order to develop software defined radio architectures towards cognitive radio (Par4CR). The IAPP Par4CR project brought together a consortium of seven major European players to perform a joint research programme and exchange knowledge on technologies crucial for the development of software defined radio and cognitive radio.
Current SDR research is focusing on developing wireless communication technology that supports a discrete number of specific radio standards with limited flexibility (multiple narrowband architectures). The Par4CR research programme addressed improvements around system, architecture and circuit design of SDR to enable its evolution to CR from an integral radio pipe perspective. The research focussed on all aspects of SDR and CR, from antenna via front-end, RF circuits, data conversion and signal processing and their interrelationships in order to achieve the breakthroughs in performance and cost required to make SDR a reality. Moreover, choices between alternative approaches and solutions were made taking into account the need for having a seamless evolutionary path towards CR. The research particularly paid attention to system design and development of critical circuits and algorithms.
One of the important goals of Par4CR was to facilitate the efficient and effective transfer of knowledge between NXP, Catena, IMST, TNO, ITE, ESIEE and TU/e. The scope of Par4CR was to forge a long term relationship in the area of a new generation (software defined and cognitive) radio systems, thereby boosting technological research and development aimed at meeting the growing demand from users for new multimedia services and general mobility.
Based on the joint research programme the partners implemented an intensive exchange and collaboration. The overall goal of Par4CR was to develop a new architecture for software defined radio as a step towards cognitive radio based on wideband operation of transmitter and receiver.
The Par4CR project is now finalised. Elaborating on the Strategy and Roadmap efforts of the previous period, in this period use-cases for CR have been identified. In the context of these use-cases, building blocks of transmitter and receiver have been analysed and critical blocks have been selected for further study. The critical blocks have been implemented and have been validated in their appropriate context.
In addition to the inherent value of the knowledge that has been exchanged and the strongly improved cooperation with many partners, this project has made it very clear how wide the cognitive radio research area is. The different goals, definitions and boundary conditions that existed between the individual partners have helped us understand much better where to focus our current and future research. It also strongly increased our understanding of the requirements for industrializing cognitive radio.
During second half of the project, 21 exchanges have been implemented. Furthermore, 3 researchers have been newly recruited in the network. In this period the work resulted in 20 publications and 1 patent application.