Abstract: A method and transceiver for determining spectrum availability within a give area is disclosed. The given area includes cells in a grid. A belief evaluator receives a measurement from a signal and assigns an instantaneous belief indicator, an instantaneous disbelief indicator and an instantaneous ignorance indicator based on a detection threshold and the power level of the measurement. The indicators quantify the probability of a presence of a transmitter within the grid cell. A belief accumulator uses the instantaneous indicators along with accumulated belief, disbelief and ignorance indicators from previous measurements to determine cumulative belief, disbelief and ignorance indicators. The accumulated belief, disbelief and ignorance indicators are the results of previous measurements and belief/disbelief/ignorance determinations for the grid cell. An allocator indicates the status of the grid cell and whether a spectrum is available.

Abstract: Disclosed is a cellular network handoff decision mechanism which comprising the steps of: determining a sampling interval using a carrier wavelength; determining a local averaging interval that is larger than the sampling interval; determining a handoff decision interval that is larger than the local averaging interval; selecting at least two base stations from a multitude of base stations having a pilot signal from a reference cellular network using a selection criterion; determining a received signal strength from the pilot signal strength for each of the selected base stations once during every sampling interval; calculating a local average signal strength value using each of the received signal strengths once during every local averaging interval; determining an assignment region in which the local average signal strength value lies using a hysteresis range; and calculating a handoff decision once during every handoff decision interval using a handoff calculation.