With the reality that diverse air interfaces and dissimilar access networks coexist, accompanied by the trend that dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is allowed and will be gradually employed, cognition and cooperation form a promising framework to achieve the ideality of seamless ubiquitous connectivity in future communication networks. In this dissertation, the cognitive gateway (CG), conceived as a special cognitive radio (CR) node, is proposed and designed to facilitate universal interoperability among incompatible waveforms. A proof-of-concept prototype is built and tested. Located in places where various communication nodes and diverse access networks coexist, the CG can be easily set up and works like a network server with differentiated service (Diffserv) architecture to provide automatic traffic relaying and link establishment. The author extracts a scalable '“source-CG-destination“ snapshot from the entire network and investigates the key enabling technologies for such a snapshot. The CG features provide universal interoperability, which is enabled by a generic waveform representation format and the reconfigurable software defined radio platform. According to the trend of an all IP-based solution for future communication systems, the term “waveform“ in this dissertation has been defined as a protocol stack specification suite. The author gives a generic waveform representation format based on the five-layer TCP/IP protocol stack architecture. This format can represent the waveforms used by Ethernet, WiFi, cellular system, P25, cognitive radios etc. A significant advantage of CG over other interoperability solutions lies in its autonomy, which is supported by appropriate signaling processes and automatic waveform identification. The service process in a CG is usually initiated by the users who send requests via their own waveforms. These requests are transmitted during the signaling procedures. The complete operating procedure of a CG is depicted as a waveform-oriented cognition loop, which is primarily executed by the waveform identifier, scenario analyzer, central controller, and waveform converter together. The author details the service process initialized by a primary user (e.g. legacy public safety radio) and that initialized by a secondary user (e.g. CR), and describes the signaling procedures between CG and clients for the accomplishment of CG discovery, user registration and un-registration, link establishment, communication resumption, service termination, route discovery, etc. From the waveforms conveyed during the signaling procedures, the waveform identifier extracts the parameters that can be used for a CG to identify the source waveform and the destination waveform. These parameters are called “waveform indicators.“ The author analyzes the four types of waveforms of interest and outlines the waveform indicators for different types of communication initiators. In particular, a multi-layer waveform identifier is designed for a CG to extract the waveform indicators from the signaling messages. For the physical layer signal recognition, a Universal Classification Synchronization (UCS) system has been invented. UCS is conceived as a self-contained system which can detect, classify, synchronize with a received signal and provide all parameters needed for physical layer demodulation without prior information from the transmitter. Currently, it can accommodate the modulations including AM, FM, FSK, MPSK, QAM and OFDM. The design and implementation details of a UCS have been presented. The designed system has been verified by over-the-air (OTA) experiments and its performance has been evaluated by theoretical analysis and software simulation. UCS can be ported to different platforms and can be applied for various scenarios. An underlying assumption for UCS is that the target signal is transmitted continually. However, it is not the case for a CG since the detection objects of a CG are signaling messages. In order to ensure higher recognition accuracy, signaling efficiency, and lower signaling overhead, the author addresses the key issues for signaling scheme design and their dependence on waveform identification strategy. In a CG, waveform transformation (WT) is the last step of the link establishment process. The resources required for transformation of waveform pairs, together with the application priority, constitute the major factors that determine the link control and scheduling scheme in a CG. The author sorts different WT into five categories and describes the details of implementing the four typical types of WT (including physical layer analog – analog gateway, up to link layer digital – digital gateway, up-to-network-layer digital gateway, and Voice over IP (VoIP) – an up to transport layer gateway) in a practical CG prototype. The issues that include resource management and link scheduling have also been addressed. This dissertation presents a CG prototype implemented on the basis of GNU Radio plus multiple USRPs. In particular, the service process of a CG is modeled as a two-stage tandem queue, where the waveform identifier queues at the first stage can be described as M/D/1/1 models and the waveform converter queue at the second stage can be described as G/M/K/K model. Based on these models, the author derives the theoretical block probability and throughput of a CG. Although the “source-CG-destination” snapshot considers only neighboring nodes which are one-hop away from the CG, it is scalable to form larger networks. CG can work in either ad-hoc or infrastructure mode. Utilizing its capabilities, CG nodes can be placed in different network architectures/topologies to provide auxiliary connectivity. Multi-hop cooperative relaying via CGs will be an interesting research topic deserving further investigation. / Ph. D.