Frequency Scarcity And A Solution

The so called spectrum bands (chunks of frequencies) are very limited resources. In 1888 Heinrich Hertz demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic waves, which are capable of travelling through space. Later research demonstrated on how to send useful information on these electromagnetic waves. Over time different ranges of frequencies were divided among different applications. There were hundreds of various applications which needed chunks of spectrum to transmit wirelessly; these electromagnetic spectrum bands were ranging from 3Hz to 3000GHz. The careless allocation of these spectrum bands to various applications over years pushed this valuable resource to the margin of scarcity. Communication technologies which need more and more chunks of frequencies to be able of providing faster and more reliable means of communications went into a conservatory phase. Nowadays there are chunks of frequency bands that are empty 60% of the time in various geographical locations. As a result and to overcome the spectrum scarcity, there was a new idea created called Cognitive Radio. The cognitive part comes from the word cognition which is learning through experience that happens in human brain on a daily basis. The idea is to learn the behaviour of the spectrum usage over various communication technologies and through this achieve nearly optimal efficiency in utilization of the spectrum bands. This way not only the we can increase the capacity of wireless communication technologies but also their coverage and speed. We are talking about speeds up to 10Gpbs on your mobile phones!