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Opportunistic Spectrum Access in Cognitive Radio NetworksAbstract: With the increasing ubiquity of wireless devices, radio spectrum has become a scarce resource. Moreover, recent measurement studies of the radio spectrum have shown that frequency ba...nds allocated to licensed users are highly underutilized. I will give an overview of my recent research on the design and analysis of wireless networks that exploit this underutilized spectrum opportunistically while avoiding harmful interference to the licensed users. The enabling technology for such opportunistic spectrum access is cognitive radio, which is a type of wireless device that can dynamically modify its transmission and reception parameters in response to its radio environment. My research results suggest that opportunistic spectrum access based on cognitive radio technology has the potential to dramatically increase the capacity of wireless networks. Real-world applications and future research directions will also be discussed.Short BioBrian L. Mark is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering. He received the B.A.Sc. (Bachelor of Applied Science) in Computer Engineering with an option in Mathematics in 1991 from the University of Waterloo and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1995. He was a Research Staff Member at the NEC Computer and Communications Research Laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey from 1995-1999. In 1999 he was on part-time leave from NEC as a visiting researcher at Télécom ParisTech in France. He joined the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University in 2000. He received an NSF CAREER Award in 2002. His main research interests lie in the design, modeling, and performance evaluation of communication networks. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.