The computational power and algorithms needed to create a cognitive radio are quickly becoming available. There are many advantages to having a radio operated by cognitive engine, and so cognitive radios are likely to become very popular in the future. One of the main difficulties associated with the cognitive radio is ensuring the signal transmitted will follow all FCC rules. The work presented in this thesis provides a methodology to guarantee that all signals will be legal and valid. The first part to achieving this is a practical and easy to use software testing program based on the tabu search algorithm that tests the software off-line. The primary purpose of the software testing program is to find most of the errors, specially structural errors, while the radio is not in use so that it does not affect the performance of the system. The software testing program does not provide a complete assurance that no errors exist, so to supplement this deficit, a built-in self-test (BIST) is employed. The BIST is designed with two parts, one that is embedded into the cognitive engine and one that is placed into the radio's API. These two systems ensure that all signals transmitted by the cognitive radio will follow FCC rules while consuming a minimal amount of computational power.

The software testing approach based on the tabu search is shown to be a viable method to test software with improved results over previous methods. Also, the software BIST demonstrated its ability to find errors in the signal production and is dem to only require an insignificant amount of computational power. Overall, the methods presented in this paper provide a complete and practical approach to assure the FCC of the legality of all signals in order to obtain a license for the product.