Dynamic Spectrum Access Techniques for Preservation of Environment and Cultural Heritage

In recent years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been largely deployed for various applications. Among them, monitoring in unlicensed frequency bands of the environment and historical sites assumes particular relevance. However, these bands are becoming more and more overcrowded due to the fast growth of wireless services relying on them. A possible solution to overcome this problem is offered by the so-called Cognitive Radio (CR) technologies. According to the Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) paradigm, nodes of one WSN can act as Secondary Users (SUs) accessing the unused portion of one licensed spectrum band. This is admitted provided that harmful interference to the licensees, namely the Primary Users (PUs), is avoided. In this paper, we describe how WSNs using DSA can be employed for applications of environment and cultural heritage monitoring. We show by system simulation that underlay CR techniques are well-suited to this kind of applications, allowing sensor nodes to continuously perform sensing data exchange while coexisting with primary systems.