Cognitive Networks: Towards Self-Aware Networks

Preface

Networks touch every part of our lives, but managing such networks is problematic and costly. Networks need to be self-aware to govern themselves and provide resilient applications and services. Self-awareness means that learning is a crucial component to reduce human intervention, and hence the need for biologically inspired, or non-deterministic, approaches. While some of the existing breakthroughs in machine learning, reasoning techniques and biologically inspired systems can be applied to build cognitive behavior into networks, more innovations are needed.

In the wireless space, the Industrial/Scientific/Medical (ISM) band has inspired impressive technologies, such as wireless local area networks, but interference is becoming increasingly problematic due to the overcrowding in this popular band. In addition, the cellular wireless market is in transition to data-centric services including high-speed Internet access, video, audio and gaming. While communications technology can meet the need for very high data link speeds, more spectrum is needed because the demand for additional bandwidth is continuously increasing due to existing and new services as well as users' population density. This calls for intelligent ways for managing the scarce spectrum resources.

The cognitive radio terminology was coined by Joseph Mitola III and refers to a smart radio that has the ability to sense the external environment, learn from the history and make intelligent decisions to adjust ...