On the use of a controlling database for Cognitive Radio in Wireless Body Area Networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) is a fast growing technology domain, which is currently in the stage of transitioning from R&D labs through international standardization committees and fora to the market. One particular promising application domain for CR is the so called Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN). This domain is concerned with small-scale radio networks in general, and use of CR technologies in hospital environment in particular. It is expected that it can eventually lead to technologies not just for health care facilities, but also for in-home use and much more. Already with extant technology it is possible to create miniature wireless sensor devices to be placed on human body for monitoring and analysis purposes. What has not been solved yet, is the way various WBAN sensors would communicate with each other without creating interference. Recent advancements in CRS saw developments of control mechanisms for different applications, especially for larger scale (city/regional/national) uses of vacating TV broadcasting spectrum, based on utilization of Geolocation Database (GDB) as communication control registry and visualization tool. In this paper we propose technical characteristics for a controlling database (DB) to allocate radio resources and to be deployed in a hospital environment for WBAN, thus contributing to the ongoing development in CR domain.