ABSTRACT
Because of the increasing number of low-cost wireless applications, the unlicensed spectrum is quickly becoming a scarce resource. In voice-oriented wireless networks, such as, cellular systems, it has been shown that a relevant portion of the licensed spectrum is underused [1], thus yielding significant inefficiencies. A better performance can be obtained using new techniques, such as dynamic spectrum access (DSA), that allow a secondary network to exploit the white spaces in the licensed spectrum of a primary network, owing to cognitive capabilities. Most of the research activity on cognitive systems focuses on efficient spectrum utilization, in the realm of cellular systems. However, in the case of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a network typically generates bursty traffic over the entire available bandwidth.
