COGEU is a composite of technical, business, and regulatory/policy domains (Fig 1), with the objective of taking advantage of the TV digital switch-over (or analog switch-off) by developing cognitive radio systems that leverage the favorable propagation characteristics of the TVWS through the introduction and promotion of real-time secondary spectrum trading and the creation of new spectrum commons regime. COGEU will also define new methodologies for TVWS equipment certification and compliance addressing coexistence with the DVB-T/H European standard.

Fig. 1: The three domains that compose the COGEU project

At the technical level the mail goals are to:

• Design, implement and demonstrate enabling technologies based on cognitive radio to support mobile applications over TVWS for spectrum sharing business models.
• Quantify the impact of TVWS devices on DVB-T receivers and define methodologies for TVWS equipment certifications and compliance in the European regulatory context.

At the business models level the mail goal is to:

• Investigate business models enabling innovative wireless services which increase spectrum utilization through the exploitation of TVWS based on spectrum commons and secondary market regimes.

At the regulatory/policy level the mail goals are to:

• Define spectrum policies and etiquette rules to promote fairness and avoid the tragedy of the commons in case of unlicensed spectrum usage, and monopolization in case of the secondary spectrum market usage.

• Analyse the dynamics of bandwidth sharing and pricing in a spectrum market environment of TVWS under QoS and regulatory constraints.