Cognitive Networking for Spacecraft Communications

Motivation:

Telecommunications is a critical component for a spacecraft mission as it is an enabling function that provides connectivity back to Earth and provides a means for conducting experiments. New developments in telecommunications, specifically in cognitive networking, expand the possible approaches for varied spacecraft missions. Cognitive networking provides a flexible and re-configurable platform that can evolve with the mission and that provide an integrated approach to communications and data processing. Cognitive networking has become a reality due to the development of Software Defined Radios (SDR). SDR’s provide networking engineers a capability to implement wireless test beds that are fully programmable at the medium access control and physical layers. The benefit of this flexibility highly depends on the performance and usability of the specific SDR.

Approaches:

Spectrum sensing and Spectrum management are key issues in cognitive networking. To perform effective research on these issues, we have built a cognitve networking testbted. The Wireless Communications Networking lab has the following hardware components to implement a cognitive networking testbed.

  • USRP Motherboard
  • RFX900 -- 800-1000MHz Transceiver
  • RFX1200 -- 1150 MHz - 1450 MHz Transceiver
  • RFX1800 -- 1.5-2.1 GHz Transceiver
  • RFX2400 -- 2.4-2.5 GHz Transceiver, 20+mW output
  • Antennas

cognitve networking testbed

We have studied the performance of a wireless test bed based on a specific SDR, the GNU Software Radio (GSR). We implemented a simple spectrum sensing application which can tune the transceiver to a range of frequencies in a dynamic fashion. We found that the GSR platform supports the programmer with a sophisticated SDR programming environment, resulting in low implementation cost. We are currently investigating an effective spectrum management scheme to be implemented on the testbed.

Publication:


Min Song, Sachin Shetty, Robert Ash , “Cognitive Networking for Spacecraft Wireless Communications" -- MIST project December 2007 report

Literature:

  1. Dawei's GNU Radio Tutorials, http://www.nd.edu/~dshen/GNU/
  2. USRP User’s and Developer’s Guide, Matt Ettus, Ettus Research LLC. http://comsec.com/wiki?UniversalSoftwareRadioPeripheral
  3. F. Akyildiz, W. Y. Lee, M.C. Vuran and S. Mohanty, ``NeXt Generation / Dynamic Spectrum Access / Cognitive Radio Wireless Networks: A Survey," Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier), Vol. 50, pp. 2127-2159, September 2006.
  4. FCC, ET Docket No 03-222 Notice of proposed rule making and order, December 2003.
  5. DARPA XG WG, The XG Architectural Framework V1.0,2003.
  6. DARPA XG WG, The XG Vision RFC V1.0, 2003.
  7. I.F. Akyildiz, Y. Altunbasak, F. Fekri, R. Sivakumar, AdaptNet: adaptive protocol suite for next generation wireless internet, IEEE Communications Magazine  (2004).
  8. “GNU Radio – GNU FSF project,” Retrieved Feb. 2, 2006 from  http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/