Cognitive MIMO radio

Radio regulatory bodies are recognizing that the rigid spectrum assignment granting exclusive use to licensed services is highly inefficient, due to the high variability of the traffic statistics across time, space, and frequency. Recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) measurements show that, in fact, the spectrum usage is typically concentrated over certain portions of the spectrum, while a significant amount of the licensed bands (or idle slots in static time division multiple access (TDMA) systems with bursty traffic) remains unused or underutilized for 90% of time [1]. It is not surprising then that this inefficiency is motivating a flurry of research activities in the engineering, economics, and regulation communities in the effort of finding more efficient spectrum management policies.