Cognitive Wireless Mesh Network Testbed

Due to their potential capabilities, cognitive radios have recently been creating a significant interest for researchers to develop new techniques that take advantage of their use to increase spectrum utilization. Albeit generally these researchers proposed solutions that address issues related to cognitive radios, they mainly relied on either analytical or simulation tools to evaluate their proposed approaches. Being able to implement and evaluate newly- developed techniques in a testbed can be far more effective and accurate than simulation/analytical methods when assessing the performance of such techniques. In this paper, we describe an experimental wireless mesh network that we designed and built from off-the-shelf commercial components at Oregon State University. Our research group is currently developing cross-layer techniques and protocols for next- generation cognitive radio networks, and will be using the testbed to implement, test, and evaluate these techniques.