A cognitive policy management framework for DoD

Cognitive Radios and Networks have become a focus of attention commercially and within DoD. Technologies such as Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) can greatly improve spectrum utilization and can even address issues such as Anti-Jam. One of the most difficult tasks ahead of us is to manage these cognitive systems. Rules or "policies" must be used to control them, but these policies must be balanced with the intelligence innate within cognitive systems so as not to thwart performance. Typical network policies use an event-condition-action (ECA) format. But cognitive policies are often written using a “permissive / restrictive” format that is declarative stating the type of behavior desired rather than how to implement the behavior. How such policies are developed, distributed, and maintained is an active area of investigation within DoD. This paper will present work investigating the components required in a DoD system to implement a policy management framework for DSA systems and it extensibility to other cognitive systems.