Cognitive radio is a futuristic radio system that is able to survey its radio environment, understand the radio propagation conditions and adaptively transmit according to user demands in momentarily free spectrum gaps. Essentially, a cognitiveradio node must be capable of locating itself, sniff its surroundings, analyse the usage of the captured spectrum through acognitive process, and transmit data without interfering other transmissions while satisfying the users QoS requirements. To ensure non-interference, the cognitive radio node must exploit holes in the frequency, time, spatial and/or code dimensionswhere no transmission is detected. In the simplest case, the node may just identify a particular free frequency channel / timeslot / spatial direction for its transmission to the destination. In the extreme case, the node may transmit to its destination by relaying its data through a network of cognitive radio nodes where each hop may consume a different frequency channel /time slot / spatial direction.In the perspective of increased communications role in future Net Centric Operations, a cognitive radio integrated in a consistent Networking and Information Infrastructure (NII) communication management appear to be a promising technologyjustifying a RTO IST involvement.

The proposed work of the IST task group  is:

1. To make a review and synthesis of the Cognitive Radio Technologies explored within NATO countries in the military field.
2. To make a review of Civilian Technologies available for Military Cognitive Radio now and at mid long term.
3. To investigate the techniques and technologies which could implemented at mid long term in a cognitive radio and provide atechnology roadmap planning.
4. To analyse the benefit of cognitive radios integration in NNEC NII architectures.
5. To propose to the NATO community relevant axis of works on Cognitive Radios