Joint Radio Resource Management in Cognitive Networks: TV White Spaces Exploitation Paradigm Athina Bourdena 1 , Prodromos Makris 1 , Dimitrios N. Skoutas 1 , Charalabos Skianis 1 and George Kormentzas 1 1 E-mail: abourdena@icsd.aegean.gr, {pmakris, d.skoutas, cskianis, gkorm}@aegean.gr 1 Dept. of Information and Communication Systems Engineering, University of the Aegean, GR- 83200, Karlovassi Samos, Greece Evangelos Pallis 2 , George Mastorakis 2 2 E-mail: pallis@pasiphae.teiher.gr, gmastorakis@staff.teicrete.gr 2 Technological Educational Institute of Crete, Department of Applied Informatics and Multimedia, Estavromenos, Heraklion, Crete, Greece ABSTRACT In this book chapter, joint radio resource management (JRRM) issues in cognitive networks are discussed presenting the TV White Spaces (TVWS) spectrum exploitation use case. TVWS are portions of UHF spectrum, which will be released and interleaved according to the geographical region due to the gradual switch-off of analogue TV and the adoption of digital TV. With the availability of TVWS and their temporary lease, traditional network planning and RRM design rationale points need to be enhanced. This book chapter initially provides a state-of-the-art work for existing cognitive radio network architectures, while a reference architecture for commons and secondary TVWS trading is proposed. Subsequently, JRRM concepts for heterogeneous Radio Access Technologies’ extension over TVWS aiming to continuously guarantee the QoS, the network key performance indicators and at the same time targeting the overall highest system capacity, are presented. Finally, a thorough classification of existing admission control and scheduling techniques is provided, outlining the need for including continuously more cognitive and context-aware features in JRRM algorithms being applicable in advanced heterogeneous networking (HetNet) environments. 1 INTRODUCTION Emerging types of wireless network services and applications, rich in multimedia content with increased requirements for network resources and guaranteed end-to-end QoS provisioning, raise the needs for higher frequency availability and create new challenges in radio-spectrum (i.e. the fundamental resource in wireless telecommunication networks) management and administration. While the utilization of advanced digital signal processing techniques enable for efficient radio-spectrum exploitation, even under the traditional “command-and-control” spectrum administration/management policy, there is a worldwide recognition that such methods have reached their limit and are no longer optimal. In fact, radio-spectrum utilization studies have resulted that most of the licensed spectrum is under-utilized (McHenry et al., 2004), and considerable parts of it would be available when both space and time dimensions are taken into account. An example of under-utilized radio-spectrum, is the so-called “television white spaces” (TVWS) that comprise of VHF/UHF frequencies, either released/freed by the digital switchover process (“Spectrum/Digital Dividend”), or being totally unexploited, mainly at local level, due to frequency planning issues and/or network design principles (“Interleaved Spectrum”) (Australian Communication &