We propose a new cognitive radio network architecture using the IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) functionality. We implement the cognitive radio network entities standardized in IEEE 1900.4 on the IMS that exchanges RAN and terminal context information between the networks and the terminals to make optimum and immediate reconfiguration decisions. In our proposed architecture, RAN context information is obtained from cellular networks which are directly connected to the IMS. The presence management functions of the IMS are applied to exchange those information in a “push” manner, which enables immediate notification of changes in wireless environment. We evaluate the performance of the proposed context information exchange method, by comparing with the cases that adequate and immediate RAN context information is not available. The evaluation results show that the proposed framework gives 10–30% superior performance than the conventional cognitive radio networks.

In this paper, we present a coexistence protocol design for a coexistence information service to provide coexistence solutions among dissimilar or independently operated autonomous decision-making networks in a wireless communication environment over, specifically but not limited to, TV white space (TVWS) frequency bands. The designed coexistence protocol for the coexistence information service has three main functionalities: (1) To collect basic information of subscribed TVWS networks; (2) To support generating neighbor lists for the TVWS networks based on the geography information and/or propagation parameters; (3) To provide necessary information for TVWS networks to make coexistence decisions. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the designed coexistence information service ensures harmonious communications among dissimilar networks and is able to achieve coexistence over an area with the limited number of available channels in white space.

Selections of radio access networks by terminals are currently not coordinated and utilizations of the radio resources are not balanced. As a result, radio resources on some radio systems are occupied even though others can afford. In this paper, in order to provide a framework to resolve this issue, Cognitive Wireless Router (CWR) system is proposed for distributed management and independent reconfiguration of heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed system selects appropriate operational frequency bands and radio systems to connect to the Internet in corporation between the CWRs and a server and therefore can provide optimized wireless Internet access easily even in environments without wired networks. The developed prototype system reconfigures the radio devices to connect to the Internet in 27 seconds at most. It is revealed that this reconfiguration time can be shortened to less than 100 ms by elaborating its procedure. It is also clarified that network data speed required at the server to deal with 10,000 CWRs is only 4.1 Mbps.