Browsing by Author "De Nardis, Luca"
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- Cognitive radio for medical body area networks using ultra widebandPublication . Chavez-Santiago, Raul; Nolan, Keith E.; Holland, Oliver; De Nardis, Luca; Ferro, João M.; Barroca, Norberto; Borges, Luís M.; Velez, Fernando J.; Goncalves, Vânia; Balasingham, IlangkoWearable wireless medical sensors beneficially impact the healthcare sector, and this market is experiencing rapid growth. In the United States alone, the telecommunications services market for the healthcare sector is forecast to increase from $7.5 billion in 2008 to $11.3 billion in 2013. Medical body area networks improve the mobility of patients and medical personnel during surgery, accelerate the patients’ recovery, and facilitate the remote monitoring of patients suffering from chronic diseases. Currently, MBANs are being introduced in unlicensed frequency bands, where the risk of mutual interference with other electronic devices can be high. Techniques developed during the evolution of cognitive radio can potentially alleviate these problems in medical communication environments. In addition, these techniques can help increase the efficiency of spectrum usage to accommodate the rapidly growing demand for wireless MBAN solutions and enhance coexistence with other collocated wireless systems. This article proposes a viable architecture of an MBAN with practical CR features based on ultra wideband radio technology. UWB signals offer many advantages to MBANs, and some features of this technology can be exploited for effective implementation of CR. We discuss the physical and MAC layer aspects of the proposal in addition to the implementation challenges.
- Pluralistic licensingPublication . Holland, Oliver; De Nardis, Luca; Nolan, Keith; Medeisis, Arturas; Anker, Peter; Minervini, Leo Fulvio; Velez, Fernando; Matinmikko, Marja; Sydor, JohnWe introduce the concept of “pluralistic licensing”, which we describe as the award of licenses under the assumption that opportunistic secondary spectrum access will be allowed, and that interference may be caused to the primary with parameters and rules that are known to the primary at the point of obtaining the license. A key aspect of the concept is that the primary will choose from a range of offered “pluralistic licenses” each with associated fees, and each specifying alternative opportunistic access rules and associated interference characteristics. Our proposal is a novel means to take forward spectrum licensing which is fair to both primary and secondary users and takes into account the requirements of both parties. The objective is to incentivize the primary to obtain this type of license through means such as a reduced license fee, whereby the opportunistic secondary spectrum access will use “cognitive radio” mechanisms to avoid causing interference to the primary or to otherwise keep interference within known parameters. We discuss that our proposed concept can propel more robust or better design of both primary and secondary devices. For primary devices it can lead to the ability to cope with an increased degree or risk of interference among other benefits, and for secondary devices might lead to the ability to better share spectrum opportunities. Both of these aspects greatly improve spectrum usage efficiency and fairness. Our concept is also highly flexible dependent on the case-by-case deployment context, even so far as allowing solutions such as spectrum sensing and primary beacon transmissions which would otherwise not be practical or desirable, while defaulting to safe mechanisms such as a geolocation database in cases where a lower interference variance is required. Many other benefits of our concept and its extensions are discussed. We argue that “pluralistic licensing” should become the de facto form of license awarded in newly designated bands, and should also be offered to the primary as a licensing option in existing bands in cases where interference to legacy devices that might exist in the band can be avoided.