Patent ID: 8010102

Claim:
A method of operation of a cognitive radio for acquiring policy related information comprising: determining whether a new communication policy for the cognitive radio is to be implemented; querying a neighbor cognitive radio for the new communication policy, in response to determining that the new communication policy is to be implemented; verifying whether the new communication policy received from the neighbor cognitive radio is suitable for use by the cognitive radio and operating the cognitive radio with the new communication policy received from the neighbor cognitive radio and communicating the new communication policy to at least one other cognitive radio associated with a group that includes the cognitive radio and the at least one other cognitive radio when the communication policy information is verified as being suitable for use by the cognitive radio; in response to verifying that the new communication policy received from the neighbor cognitive radio is not suitable for use by the cognitive radio, querying a network node for the new communication policy; verifying whether the new communication policy received from the network node is suitable for use by the cognitive radio and operating the cognitive radio with the new communication policy received from the network node and communicating the new communication policy to the at least one other cognitive radio associated with the group when the new communication policy received from the network node is verified as being suitable for use by the cognitive radio; in response to verifying that the new communication policy received from the network node is not suitable for use by the cognitive radio, querying a server node for the new communication policy.