Towards practical REM-based radio resource management

Wireless systems are becoming increasingly complex with the coexistence of multi-frequency, multi-technology, multi-service and multi-layered systems. In this context, there is a strong need for developing technologies for optimizing future wireless systems in terms of cost, Quality of Service (QoS), resource management and spectrum efficiency. Key enabler for such technologies is providing wireless systems increased environmental awareness. At the center of these awareness-providing concepts lies Radio Environment Maps (REMs), obtained by cooperatively combining measurements reported by multiple nodes of the network, with the purpose of having geo-localized information on the characteristics of the radio environment, such as spectrum opportunities or interference sources. This paper presents motivations and initial results of our work towards developing a general reference architecture and implementation for Radio Environment Maps. Our approach differs from earlier work by carefully considering applications beyond classical dynamic spectrum access scenarios. In particular, we are studying the use of REMs in improving radio resource management algorithms in classical managed networks and femtocell networks as well.