A centralised broker-based CR network architecture for TVWS exploitation under the RTSSM policy

The paper discusses the TV white spaces exploitation by a prototype centralised cognitive radio network architecture, under the real time secondary spectrum management scheme. Vital part of this architecture is a spectrum broker that coordinates the radio resources allocation process among secondary systems, as well as the transactions of spectrum trading following a fixed-price policy. Efficient broker operation as a matter of maximum-possible spectrum utilisation and minimum fragmentation is obtained by decision-making methods based on Backtracking, Simulated Annealing and Genetic algorithm. The validity of the proposed approach is verified via a number of experiments under controlled conditions, while its performance is evaluated against a number of secondary systems competing for TVWS exploitation, each one featuring different transmission characteristics.