QoSMOS is an ICT FP7 Large Scale Integrating Project running under Grant Agreement INFSO-ICT-248454. Coordinated by British Telecommunications plc in the UK it has 14 partners across Europe and one partner from Japan. its objectives respond to an upcoming change of regulatory paradigm which is expected to enable future wireless communication systems to operate in shared or license-exempt RF spectrum, potentially also enabling opportunistic use of so-called white spaces in RF spectrum. White spaces are (temporarily) unoccupied or under-utilized frequency bands dedicated to incumbent users that enjoy protection from interference caused by other spectrum users operating in the same frequency band. In particular, QoSMOS aims to make this technology ready for being deployed in commercial grade wireless communication systems.

Fraunhofer is represented in QoSMOS by its Institutes FOKUS and IIS. IIS focuses on RF transceiver and antenna technologies for flexible reconfigurable radio. The CRN@NGNI group represents FOKUS and leads the project's efforts on developing cognitive methods for Dynamic Spectrum Access. Spectrum management is complementing and augmenting conventional radio resource management by cognitive as well as related self-x methods ─ such as self-management, self-learning, and similar ─ for optimizing RF spectrum access under interference mitigation demands, technological and socio-economic constraints, considering QoS and mobility requirements of state-of-the-art wireless communication systems based, for example, on LTE-advanced. The CRN@NGNI group developed a distributed architecture that facilitates hierarchical decision-making on how to use available spectrum efficiently. In particular, how to deploy information on spectrum availability towards a wireless infrastructure, how to manage chunks of spectrum in use respecting incumbents demands on interference protection, and how to enrich information on spectrum by observations and measurements on spectral efficiency, on the specific interference situation, and on dependability of spectrum access on demand. Development of technologies is accompanied by a strong participation in standardization of dynamic spectrum access systems in the scope of IEEE DySPAN-SC.