SBIR Phase I: Cognitive Radio Small Cell for Pervasive Coverage and Sustained

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes three market segments and domestic/international collaboration in technology development and engineering training. The first market segment will be to provide first responders with a way to improve reliability in the communication for incident management through the deployment of on-the-scene smart self-configurable communication systems. This is expected to improve first responder reliance on communications equipment at times of disasters and crisis. The second segment is to target the proposed small cells to domestic carriers for use by enterprise customers and consumers to increase capacity and coverage locally. Finally, the third segment is to provide key spectrum management capability to the deployment of a 4G/5G system in emerging markets through partnerships. The program will also enable training programs for graduate students and complex research & development partnerships with domestic and international partners. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to develop a cognitive carrier-neutral small cell for mobile communications. The ability to effectively use wireless spectrum is becoming more prevalent, and even more of a requirement, as time goes on due to regulatory issues and spectrum scarcity. However, current communication systems are not sufficiently spectrum-efficient, which is why there is a land-grab for spectrum. A critical improvement needed in communication technology to address spectrum scarcity is smart spectrum reuse. This proposal seeks to develop a cognitive small cell capable of providing smart reliable coverage, and sustained data rates to users in the vicinity. The main advantages of this communication system will be to: 1) Operate as a plug-and-play access point; 2) Provide carrier neutral 4th generation/5th generation (4G/5G) wireless coverage; 3) Provide seamless coverage and sustained data rates to mobile users when multiple cells are deployed in contiguous areas; 4) Operate in multiple bands simultaneously through bandwidth aggregation; and 5) Offload traffic from the carrier network through an Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) backhaul.