Telecommunications Policy Special Issue
Cognitive Radio: Regulation and Markets

Guest editors
Pieter Ballon - IBBT-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel – pieter.ballon@vub.ac.be
William Lehr - CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – wlehr@mit.edu
Simon Delaere – IBBT-SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel – simon.delaere@vub.ac.be

In recent years, one of the most significant developments in wireless technology has been the movement toward building Cognitive Radio (CR) systems. CR adds intelligence to radio components, enabling them to understand and adapt themselves to the environment they operate in. Recent regulatory decisions in the US and Europe have advanced the potential commercial deployment of CR systems to facilitate opportunistic secondary use of TV band spectrum, or socalled TV White Space, and are potentially considering much wider-ranging implementations. It is becoming increasingly clear that even the incremental application of CR technologies and the new spectrum access and business models that they entail, has the potential to cause a paradigm shift in the way spectrum is managed, utilised and monetised. For policy makers and regulators, this poses a range of challenges, as well as providing opportunities to reduce scarcity, increase competitiveness, and so on. The aim of this issue is to gather a range of international,multidisciplinary insights into the major challenges and implications for Telecommunications Policy and Regulation vis-à-vis CR Markets and Technologies. The first set of issues concerns the context of CR systems, i.e. the rationale, challenges and solutions related to cooperative and non-cooperative spectrum sharing. The second set of issues refers to Cognitive Radio and its progress and implications for policy and regulation. The third set of issues deals with the specific use of CR in various markets and under various regulatory circumstances.

An open for call papers is organised for this special issue. Contributions need to address the particular relevance and issues related to CR for policy makers, regulators, the telecommunications industry and other relevant stakeholders. The special issue is convened in collaboration with the Cost Action IC0905 Terra, funded by the European Science Foundation.

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Contributions may address

• The meaning of CR within the overall development of flexible spectrum regulation,
standardisation and/or industry strategies and roadmaps.
• The frameworks that regulators have created and are in the process of creating to allow
the use of CR devices.
• Comparative analysis of alternative secondary use management regimes related to CR
• The regulatory feasibility and/or economic viability of CR technologies, enablers and alternatives, within the context of TV White Spaces or other domains, taking into account the positions within the telecoms industry, the IT, the broadcasting sectors and so on.
• Implications of CR and flexible spectrum regulation on market structures, incentives for innovation, consumer access, or other policy concerns.
• Other relevant topics in the context of this special issue’s theme.

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Quick info:

• Length: Contributions will be full-length papers (4000-6000 words).
• Review: Articles should conform to the journal's notes for authors and will follow the double blind review procedure of the journal. Submissions should be uploaded through the journal on line portal (see link at the bottom of this mail).
• Journal Info: Published by Elsevier, Editor in Chief Erik Bohlin, Latest impact factor 0.969 (Thomson Reuters 2010)

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Deadline: August 30, 2011

Please visit: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/description