Opportunistic spectrum access for emergency response networks

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Communication is a primary challenge in responding to both natural and man-made disasters. Emergency response networks are thus an important application area where opportunistic or cognitive spectrum access offers many desirable properties, including rapid network setup and reliable operation without a fixed infrastructure and the ability to withstand (or recover quickly from) the failure of some of its nodes or external disruptions beyond our control. In this research we will study:***- Advanced channel selection algorithms that allow for multi-channel operation.***- Coexistence of several cognitive networks and the necessary protocols for multi-piconet synchronization and collaboration in order to maximize performance and minimize the likelihood and impact of external disruptions.***- The setup, control, and maintenance of a virtual common control channel through which this synchronization can be performed.***- Routing protocols that make the best use of multiple channels, possibly including inter-piconet hopping of nodes in order to minimize the use of bridge nodes and improve performance, and route recovery algorithms to minimize the impact of disruptions.***- Channel aggregation and disaggregation to improve the performance of individual networks as well as multi-hop traffic.***- Security aspects including resilience to false information, active jamming by hostile nodes or transmitters, and other threats.***- Finally, the architecture and design of emergency response networks that will incorporate state-of-the art techniques and protocols described above, and implementation of a testbed using open source software and compatible software-defined radio subsystems to validate the architecture and obtain realistic performance measurements.**