I was invited to speak at the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s seminar on cognitive radio and software-defined radio: technologies and techniques. This will be held in the IET’s HQ at Savoy Place in London on Thursday September 18. If you plan on being there, why not get in touch; I’d be delighted to meet you.

My talk will be about the ongoing efforts worldwide to prototype cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access ideas, and increase the current understanding of the challenges and value of these new technologies through experimentation. A preview of the upcoming DySPAN demos will feature as part of this.

The full programme contains the schedule of talks and posters. Hope to meet you there.

A ‘DySPAN 2008 Demonstration Pack’ is now available to download for free from the demonstrations webpage on http://www.ieee-dyspan.com. This pack comprises a Matlab script and over 4000 measurements spanning the 400MHz-500MHz band captured in the Knickerbocker Hotel, Chicago during March when Tom and I visited (the Knickerbocker Hotel is where IEEE DySPAN 2008 will be held).

The Matlab script generates a 3D plot of the a subset of the measurement trace files but more importantly, it gives demonstrators and indeed other researchers a starting point to test their dynamic spectrum access systems using real and relevant measurement information. The traces can be used to drive detection and decision engines and will hopefully cut down the time taken to get up and running when the demonstrations sessions begin in October.

This 3D plot was generated using the supplied Matlab script and just 500 of the over 4000 measurement traces available in the download. Needless to say, there’s quite a lot of activity in this band in the Chicago area. Adjacent to the DySPAN demonstration frequencies (see below), a number of TV and intermittent high-power signals can be spotted. One particular short-duration high-power narrowband signal can be observed at approximately 474MHz.

Details of our FCC special temporary authority (STA) licence that allows IEEE DySPAN 2008 demonstrators to use 482MHz-500MHz for cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access systems can also be found on the updated demonstrations page.