Stefan  Mangold, Swisscom Innovations

Radio spectrum is today not efficiently utilized because of complicated radio regulation processes. Access to radio spectrum is frustratingly difficult. The access is restricted by an old radio regulatory regime that emerged over the last 100 years. Large parts of our radio spectrum are allocated to licensed radio services. As a result, open access to most of the radio spectrum is only allowed with very low transmission powers, in a so-called underlay approach, as for example used by Ultra Wideband. The overlay approach, i.e., the free access to open spectrum, is generally not permitted. Only some small fractions of the radio spectrum, the unlicensed bands, are openly available, under certain limitations. The relatively new research direction carved as "Dynamic Spectrum Access" is an attempt to change this. With dynamic spectrum access, so-called cognitive radios coordinate the usage of radio spectrum without involvement of restrictive radio regulation. They operate in spectrum when it is not used by licensed radio systems, and therefore share spectrum with radio systems that have priority access. In this talk, we briefly summarize the major aspects and motivation of cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access. This is a joint work with Lars Berlemann, Swisscom Innovations

BIOGRAPHY

Stefan Mangold works at Swisscom Innovations, Berne, Switzerland. Before joining Swisscom in April 2005, Dr. Mangold worked with Philips Research U.S.A., and ComNets RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He received his Masters and his Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering/Telecommunications in 1997 and 2003, respectively, both from RWTH Aachen University, Germany.