Abstract :
The initial promise of cognitive devices appears to have lost some of its shine. There is not as much free spectrum as was first thought, and accessing it will require expensive and complex devices. These devices will be competing with well-established technologies such as Wi-Fi and cellular networks, which are cheap and increasingly ubiquitous. Add in the increased device cost, the difficulty of indoor use, and the reduced battery consumption of cognitive devices and their shine becomes tarnished. There are wider implications, too. It has often been suggested that managing the spectrum and issuing licences will become less relevant as devices become better at finding and exploiting gaps on a very short-term basis. But experience with cognitive devices so far suggests that they will find it very difficult to understand where those gaps are for the foreseeable future. The database solution shows more promise, and could be extended to larger areas of spectrum, enabling a more dynamic allocation and reservation of resources for a wide range of applications. It also offers potential for novel ways to manage spectrum. Regulators are not concerned primarily with whether a new technology will succeed - although, of course, they hope it will. Instead, they see their role as enabling as wide a range of technologies as possible to flourish, leaving it to the market to determine which ones win out. So expect Ofcom and other regulators to work hard to set conditions that enable cognitive access. It´s far less clear when we might see commercially successful devices in use, but it is just possible that some of the mechanisms developed to enable cognitive access will revolutionise spectrum use in the longer term.
