Hybrid approach to Cognitive radio test bed

Cognitive radios are the advanced wireless systems that are used to intelligently access the scarce radio resource - the spectrum. Cognitive radios have ability to sense the ambience, spectrum usage, geo conditions and fuse these information to arrive at a spectrum decision which helps to access the network in a `smart´, controlled manner. However, the incumbent licensed systems are not sure on the robustness and accuracy of the sensing systems of these cognitive radios and have serious concern on the interference caused by `false´ detection of spectrum holes. It is very much important to practically verify the advanced algorithms, theoretical frameworks for Cognitive radios both in terms of sensing and switching so as to ensure that the incumbent systems are fully convinced about its co-existence. Generally, performance evaluation of these algorithms is done using simulators, test beds and expensive protocol testers. While each of these has their own merits and demerits, we propose an architecture that combines the best of both simulators/emulators and real-time test beds for scaling up the experiments while keeping testing as realistic as possible with the harsh wireless environments. We have also included a sample of early results in a preliminary implementation of this test bed.