Cognitive Networks: Towards Self-Aware Networks

10.4. Device Architecture for Cognitive Radio and Imperative Semantics

Cognitive radio community architecture looks at the world of wireless from a disinterested third-person point of view. Semantically, the ideal output of an analysis of the world from that perspective would be a logical theory, derived from policy and standards specifications, whose models would represent all (and only) the valid ways in which radio systems could interact.

While such a theory would be of great utility in many ways, it would not, in itself, constitute a blueprint for designing and implementing radio devices that act in accord with the theory. That would be akin to asserting that the laws governing automobile traffic control together with a specification of the highway system entail a complete theory as to how to design and build an automobile that can only move about in a lawful manner. That might not be entirely implausible if no automobile existed before the specification of the laws and highway system, but, as with radio, the actual situation is reversed.

At the device level, therefore, cognitive radio architecture must take account of the fact that a radio implements a certain set of actions defined in advance by the physics of radio and the current state of radio technology. (Some of those actions involve the ability to observe certain phenomena.) In current parlance, one can think of a radio as an agent capable of making certain observations and performing certain basic actions upon command. ...