Challenges for network aspects of Cognitive Radio

Cognitive Radio is often promoted to be a promising solution for the spectrum scarcity problem. Hence, a lot of research activities in both the civilian and the military world focus on introducing cognitive radio technology into modern networks. Besides the obvious changes in the radio architecture (sensing capability, cognitive engine), this combination of technologies also poses new challenges to existing protocols, like the support for Dynamic Spectrum Access. Moreover, the additionally gathered information about the spectrum environment can also be used to improve the quality of communication. In our paper, we focus on network aspects like Quality of Service or routing and identify challenges regarding their application in a cognitive radio system. We consider architectural features of infrastructure and ad hoc networks, and we analyse their influence on the control channel. The analysis is carried out in terms of specific requirements for military networks.