Field of the invention

The invention relates to techniques for optimizing the use of the radio spectrum.

Description of the related art

"Cognitive Radios" have recently emerged as a new paradigm to build intelligent and spectrum-aware radio systems. The current approach with cognitive radios is to create spectrum awareness so that radio transceivers can move on to "free" or "unused" spectrum bands. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the entity that regulates spectrum usage in the U.S., is considering opening some radio and television frequencies for this sort of use. Additionally, specific projects, e.g. by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), aim at extending this paradigm by defining spectrum usage policy languages (XG-project). The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has started work on the necessary standardization towards the rapid deployment of "spectrum agile" systems.

In order to maximize the benefit from spectrum agility, a system should be able to use very wide spectrum areas. Of course, "wide spectrum" is intended to mean that cognitive radio should be able to use spectrum from a large selection of bands, while the transmission itself might be narrowband.

A problem arising with cognitive radio lies in that cost-effectively scanning a wideband radio-spectrum in (near) real-time fashion is far from easy.

One possible approach would involve using "smart" antennas with extremely wideband A/D-converters (and the supporting Radio Frequency circuitry). Technology adapted to support that approach is not available at the moment. Even roadmaps indicate that technology possibly made available in the future will entail a power-consumption budget quite unlikely to lead to commercially viable solutions (with the possible exception of certain military systems with very high power budget available).

Another approach, based on the use of several narrowband receivers is too inefficient, with increased costs and power-consumption.

Wideband scanning of frequencies (over several GHz) by using, e.g. an OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) narrowband receiver will not lead to a scanning time fast enough, and could be also very expensive in terms of power budget.

In fact, the prior art includes a variety of circuits and arrangements adapted to operate on very wide frequency ranges.

For instance, US-A-3 662 316 describes a pulse receiver for detecting short baseband electromagnetic pulses employing a dispersion-less, broadband transmission line antenna. The arrangement includes a circuit operating with a biased semiconductor diode located within the transmission line for instantaneously detecting substantially the total energy of the baseband pulse and providing a corresponding output adapted for application in conventional utilization circuits.

As a further example, US-A-5 345 471 describes an ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver utilizing a strobed input line with a sampler connected to an amplifier. In a differential configuration, +/- UWB inputs are connected to separate antennas or two halves of a dipole antenna. The two input lines include samplers which are commonly strobed by a gating pulse with a very low duty cycle. In a single ended configuration, only a single strobed input line and sampler is utilized. The samplers integrate, or average, up to 10,000 pulses to achieve high sensitivity and good rejection of uncorrelated signals.

By way of still further example, US-A-5 677 927 describes an impulse radio communications system using one or more subcarriers to communicate information from an impulse radio transmitter to an impulse radio receiver. The impulse radio communication system is an ultra-wideband (UWB) time domain system. The use of subcarriers provides impulse radio transmissions added channelization, smoothing and fidelity. Subcarriers of different frequencies or waveforms can be used to add channelization of impulse radio signals. Thus, an impulse radio link can communicate on many independent channels simultaneously by employing different subcarriers for each channel. The impulse radio uses modulated subcarrier(s) for time positioning a periodic timing signal or a coded timing signal. Alternatively, the coded timing signal can be summed or mixed with the modulated subcarrier(s) and the resultant signal is used to time modulate the periodic timing signal. Direct digital modulation of data is another form of subcarrier modulation for impulse radio signals. Direct digital modulation can be used alone to time modulate the periodic timing signal or the direct digitally modulated the periodic timing signal can be further modulated with one or more modulated subcarrier signals. Linearization of a time modulator permits the impulse radio transmitter and receiver to generate time delays having the necessary accuracy for impulse radio communications.

Object and summary of the invention

The preceding analysis of the related art demonstrates that there exists the need of defining solutions capable of scanning and exploring the frequency spectrum, e.g. in "cognitive radio" systems in a more satisfactory way as compared to the prior art solutions described in the foregoing.

The object of the invention is thus to provide a fully satisfactory response to that need.

According to the present invention, that object is achieved by means of a method having the features set forth in the claims that follow. The invention also relates to a corresponding system, as well as a related computer program product, loadable in the memory of at least one computer and including software code portions for performing the steps of the method of the invention when the product is run on a computer. As used herein, reference to such a computer program product is intended to be equivalent to reference to a computer-readable medium containing instructions for controlling a computer system to coordinate the performance of the method of the invention. Reference to "at least one computer" is evidently intended to highlight the possibility for the present invention to be implemented in a distributed/ modular fashion. The claims are an integral part of the disclosure of the invention provided herein.

A preferred embodiment of the invention thus involves scanning a frequency spectrum to detect usage thereof via at least a portion of an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) receiver. From scanning performed via said UWB receiver, information is derived as to the usage of individual bands in said frequency spectrum, and operation of a radio cognitive system is controlled as a function of said information as to usage of individual bands in said frequency spectrum to operate said radio cognitive system over unused bands in said frequency spectrum.

The basic idea underlying the arrangement described herein is to re-use a basic Ultra-WideBand (UWB) radio architecture for performing fast and low-cost spectrum scanning, e.g. in support of a "radio cognitive" system. Such an arrangement will not involve setting up a complete Ultra-WideBand transceiver unit, but may simply require a Si or SiGe based Ultra-WideBand receiver. Alternatively, parts of the receiving unit of an existing Ultra-WideBand transceiver may be re-used for spectrum scanning. The Ultra-WideBand receiver will be constantly monitoring the full spectrum (or large parts of it), and used as a simple spectrum analyzer with very fast adaptive filters. The Ultra-WideBand receiver will quickly thus check the available power level over each spectrum band, for example by means of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) of the received signal.

Preferably, the arrangement includes known noise-floors for different bands: simple signal strength comparison will thus make it possible for the system to make a decision as whether a certain spectrum portion is currently used or not, while the system will not try to perform full signal recovery to ascertain who is transmitting and what.

An interesting characteristic that makes an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) architecture ideally suited for a spectrum scanning function is its wideband range: the definition of "Ultra-WideBand" is in fact currently applied to systems having an operational bandwidth in excess of 500 MHz. A very fast signal analysis capability is thus available in a UWB system, which makes it possible for the exemplary arrangement described herein to include a single, inexpensive receiver that does not use Ultra-WideBand technology for communication: in fact the arrangement employs only a relatively simple circuitry to have an Ultra-WideBand receiver and the comparator against the known signal strength is a very simple circuitry with programmable memory (i.e. flash memory).

The arrangement described herein also lends itself to be used in those systems that already embed a full Ultra-WideBand transceiver: in fact, it is possible to momentarily discontinue the normal communication behaviour, in coordination with the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, and exploit only the receiving unit to perform fast spectrum scanning.

Brief description of the annexed drawings

The invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the enclosed figures of drawing, wherein:

• Figure 1 shows an exemplary arrangement of a ultra-wideband receiver employed as a fast spectrum scanner,
• Figure 2 is a schematic diagram exemplary of possible operation of the arrangement of Figure 1, and
• Figure 3 is a chart illustrating an example of periodic usage pattern of the radio frequency band.

Detailed description of preferred embodiments of the invention

Figure 1 illustrates an exemplary arrangement of a spectrum estimator for a cognitive radio system (not shown as a whole, but of any known type). The arrangement operates in association with an antenna 100 that is configured to receive electromagnetic signals and an Ultra-WideBand (UWB) receiver 101 able to receive and process wideband-signal. The UWB receiver 101 may be of any known type in the art (see e.g. the documents cited in the introductory portion of this description).

It will be appreciated that the arrangement described herein properly exploits only the primary part of the UWB receiver (namely that portion of an UWB receiver adapted to scan the frequency spectrum to find out if signal is present over a given band). However, the UWB receiver 101 as shown herein may include extra circuits and logic required to perform full signal receiver functionality (synchronization, estimation etc.) for one or more standards. The availability of such full receiver capabilities, if cost-effective, may represent an asset, e.g. when specific processing of certain signals is important (e.g. to ascertain that signal with strength X detected in a certain band is actually of a given type e.g. GSM transmission).

Advantageously, the arrangement described herein includes a block 102 comprised of e.g. programmable logic, memory or similar circuitry adapted to store reference values for signal strengths over various bands expected to be covered by the scanning action performed by the UWB receiver 101. This information may be arranged e.g. in the form of a Threshold Look-Up Table block and used to verify whether the signal received is just background noise, or signal power likely to correspond to actual spectrum usage.

A Spectrum Usage Estimator module 103 is sensitive to the output signals from the UWB receiver 101 and the block 102. On the basis of those signals, the module 103 decides whether a band under investigation (i.e. being covered by UWB scanning) is really in use. As indicated, while representing a currently preferred choice, the presence of the block 102 (e.g. in the form of a Threshold Look-Up Table) is not a mandatory requirement. In fact, the Spectrum Usage Estimator module 103 may operate on the basis of e.g. relative signal strength peaks (compared to neighbourhood bands) and time-domain signal analysis (e.g. known signal variance).

In any case, the Spectrum Usage Estimator module 103 is configured for detecting whether a signal is present over a given channel covered by the UWB scanning action. The Spectrum Usage Estimator 103 is typically configured (in manner known per se) to implement complex statistical analysis functions in the time/frequency domains to determine if a sub-band is being used and to provide a corresponding signal/information to a Radio Controller Unit 104 associated with the "cognitive radio" system (not shown).

In a presently preferred embodiment, the Spectrum Usage Estimator 103 and the Threshold Look-Up Table 102 are implemented in the Medium Access Control processor of an UWB transceiver unit.

Alternatively, in order to produce a low-cost system without any programmable processor embedded, the Threshold Look-Up Table 102 can be programmed via an external host. For example, this may occur by means of dedicated registers through an Inter Integrated Circuit (I2C) bus. The Spectrum Usage Estimator circuitry 103 lends itself to pure hardware implementation. The output is preferably returned to the host (i.e. the unit 104) over a high-speed bus, given the amount of information produced.

In Figure 2, shows how a full, complete UWB transceiver can be exploited within the framework of an arrangement as illustrated in figure 1. Specifically, in Figure 1 reference 10 designates a time interval in which the UWB transceiver is normally communicating. At the instant indicated by 20, the UWB transceiver is reconfigured for spectrum scanning only. Reference 30 designates a time interval over which UWB transceiver operates as spectrum scanner within the framework of the arrangement of Figure 1. At the instant indicated 40 the UWB transceiver is returned to normal operation and resumes communication.

It will be appreciated that the arrangement described herein is not limited to any specific UWB (pulse) radio technology, and several different alternative implementations leading to same end results can be easily envisaged by those of skill in the art. For instance, the UWB receiver may include multicarrier (subcarrier, OFDM) circuitry, where spectrum band agility can be provided by subcarriers. Alternatively, the UWB receiver can be of the "direct sequence" type, where pass-band (adaptive) filters are used to provide spectrum separation for analysis.

In the simplest operational configuration, the Spectrum Usage Estimator 103 returns only one bit per sub-band scanned to the unit 104 to indicate if the energy detected is above or below the threshold. Then the unit 104 can post-process such information over time to filter out transient effects.

In a more complex operational configuration, the Spectrum Usage Estimator 103 returns to the unit 104 information as to the signal level per sub-band, thus providing more accurate information.

In still another configuration, a soft decision (i.e. the estimated probability that a sub-band is being used) could be provided. The Spectrum Usage Estimator 103 can also be able to detect usage patterns in the time domain, as shown in Figure 3, e.g. discovering that a specific sub-band is used at periodic time intervals, which depends on the traffic pattern of the users of that band.

Consequently, without prejudice to the underlying principles of the invention, the details and the embodiments may vary, even appreciably, with reference to what has been described by way of example only, without departing from the scope of the invention as defined by the annexed claims.