Wireless Innovation Forum approves new standard for cognitive radio

WASHINGTON, USA: The Wireless Innovation Forum announced the approval of a specification, “Description of Cognitive Radio Ontology,” as well as new projects that support Software Communications Architecture (SCA), in conjunction with its 67th Working Meeting in Schaumburg, Illinois, Sept. 13-17.

New projects include an SCA Next project on Asynchronous Messaging, the creation of a Test and Certification Guide, and a project on Security Requirements and Profile Case Studies.

The Cognitive Radio Ontology is an important part of the Modeling Language for Mobility (MLM) project undertaken by the MLM Working Group of Wireless Innovation Forum (WINNF). The Ontology specification (WINNF-10-S-0007, available here: http://groups.winnforum.org/d/do/3370) includes:

* Core Ontology (covering basic terms of wireless communications from the PHY and MAC layers).
* Concepts needed to express the use cases; only the use cases that relate to the PHY and MAC layers are included.
* Partial expression of the FM3TR waveform (structure and subcomponents, FSM)
Partial expression of the Transceiver Facility APIs.

It is expected that the Cognitive Radio Ontology and the MLM Language developed in this project will provide opportunities for development of interoperable radios by independent vendors and lead to additional specifications/standards for data exchange to support the next generation capabilities including vertical and horizontal mobility, spectrum awareness and dynamic spectrum adaption, waveform optimization, feature exchanges, and advanced applications.

A new project proposal on Asynchronous Messaging was approved by the Steering Group for the Coordinating Committee on International SCA Standards at this meeting, and work on this project began by the SCA Evolution Work Group.

This specification is being developed for SCA platform and application developers who need higher performance for inter-component messaging, and will suggest CORBA-based solutions using asynchronous messaging that reduce message latency and allow parallel processing.

The SCA Test, Evaluation and Certification Model Realization was also approved by the Steering Group for the Coordinating Committee on International SCA Standards. This project will result in a recommendation aiming to define the realization aspects (including business models) of the role based, generic certification process of SCA based SDRs, as defined in "Test and Certification Guide for SDRs based on SCA, Part 1: SCA" (SDRF-08-P-0007-V1.0.0).

It is being prepared for procurement authorities as well as producers of radios, radio components and tools, who are active in markets where the standardized SCA is relevant and compliance is required. It will give them guidance to establish test and certification capabilities for "category 1" standards to ensure that compliance is met in an efficient way including time to market and cost.

The Forum’s Project Approval Committee has also approved a project defining Security Requirements and Profile Case Studies supporting the public safety community, giving guidance and a set of requirements that communications system designers, developers and manufacturers could follow in developing security solutions for their products.

The resulting report will include a comprehensive set of security requirements that cover all aspects of SDR and software defined radio devices (SDRD) security for the underlying SDRD platform and its software operating environment and a requirements profile identifying a subset of the security requirements applicable to Public Safety SDRDs. Future activities will create additional profiles for other classes of SDRDs as time permits.