The cognitive radio technology will allow a group of potential users to identify and access available spectrum resources provided that the interference to users for whom the band has been licensed is kept below a prescribed level. This research area is at an early stage because various research challenges have to be addressed and solved. In this talk we present an overview of some research issues for cognitive radio networks. Specifically, we present research and developments in cognitive radio networks with focus on: i) spectrum sensing, ii) link adaptation, iii) advanced transceiver design, and iv) admission control. We discuss research problems related to these specific topics that need to be addressed before deployment of cognitive radio systems.

Vijay K. Bhargava received his B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario in 1970, 1972 and 1974 respectively. Currently he is a professor and Head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia.

Vijay is a co-author and/or co-editor of four books the latest of which is Cognitive Wireless Communications Networks (Springer: 2007) with Professor Ekram Hossain of the University of Manitoba. In January 2007, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.

A Fellow of the IEEE, the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), the Royal Society of Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Vijay has been honoured many times by his colleagues and has received numerous awards. Vijay is very active in the IEEE and has served as the President of the Information Theory Society, Vice President for Regional Activities Boardand Director of Region 7 (IEEE Canada). He is a candidate for the office of President-Elect of the IEEE Communications Society.

Section meetings are held on a monthly basis and are open to all IEEE members interested in the current events of our organization.

Cigré Canada is holding this year’s conference on power systems in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is the third such annual conference organized by the Canadian National Committee of Cigré.

The theme for this year’s conference is : Technology and Innovation for the Power Grids of the Future. The conference will bring together power engineering professionals, decision makers, economists, academics and others with interest in electric power systems. The conference is meant to showcase Canadian contributions as well as to promote Cigré as a strong technical organization, capable of contributing to the Canadian technical expertise and know-how through its Study Committees and technical documents they produce as well as its conference proceedings.

In addition to active participation by practicing engineers and professionals, we would like to encourage graduate students to attend this conference to share their research activities and contributions. This will give the graduate students an excellent opportunity not only to get feedback on their work from other researchers but also to meet prospective employers during the conference.

For more information on the conference please visit the official site.

Prospective authors are invited to submit their full papers for review, according to the schedule below. The papers and technical enquiries should be sent to cigre08@ee.umanitoba.ca. Papers will be accepted only in Adobe Acrobat format (*.pdf).

Deadline May 30, 2008 (4-6 pages, CIGRÉ format)

For more information visit the official site.