The gamification of Dynamic Spectrum Access & cognitive radio

Current wireless research is dominated by the need to satisfy ever-increasing demands for high-speed mobile wireless data. To satisfy these demands, researchers employ flexible, agile software-based radio systems which efficiently use the resources available to them. Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) and cognitive radio are key concepts for achieving these research goals. This paper presents Spectrum Wars, a game designed to inform about DSA and cognitive radio but which has also proven to be an effective tool in educating about many of the basic principles of wireless telecommunications. The game pits two teams of players against each other to create and maintain wireless connections in a dynamic environment in order to transfer data as quickly as possible between a transmitter and receiver. Built upon Iris, an open-source framework for software radio, Spectrum Wars is freely available to be recreated, reused, expanded and improved. The paper explains the background of DSA and cognitive radio and gives an overview of the Iris framework. It discusses related work including the MANIAC challenge and the DARPA spectrum challenge before presenting the game itself, examining the feedback of players and exploring the possibilities for future work and improvement.