SpiderRadio: A Cognitive Radio Network With Commodity Hardware and Open Source Software

In this paper, the authors present SpiderRadio a cognitive radio prototype for dynamic spectrum access networking. Spider-Radio is built using commodity IEEE 802.11a/b/g hardware and the open source MadWiFi driver. This helps one in developing and testing their prototype without having to buy and manage several licensed spectrum bands. They begin with a discussion on the key research issues and challenges in the practical implementation of a dynamic spectrum access network. Then, the lessons learned from the development of dynamic spectrum access protocols, designing management frame structures, software implementation of the dynamic spectrum access network protocol stack and testbed experimental measurement results are presented.