Energy and Resource Consumption Evaluation of Mobile Cognitive Radio Devices

This chapter proposes a Cognitive Radio network architecture that enables for the efficient operation of mobile devices over TV White Spaces. The proposed network architecture comprises of a Geo-location database and a spectrum broker that coordinates TV White Spaces access, by a number of 4G secondary communication systems, competing/requesting for the available radio spectrum. Furthermore, it introduces an innovative methodology for evaluation of energy and resource consumption in mobile cognitive devices that does not require any external metering device but exploits the advanced software and hardware features of modern smart phones to this end. In particular, the various APIs provided, by such operating systems for access to their functionality can be used for adequately auditing and reporting resource consumption on such mobile platforms. More specifically, we evaluate energy consumption and CPU utilisation in various communication scenarios via a number of experimental tests, carried out under controlled conditions. Network connectivity, calling and multimedia playback are some of the scenarios that are evaluated and presented here.