A system and method for cognitive communication device operation. In accordance with the system and method, a node (102, 106, 107) that communicates in a wireless multihopping communication network (100) uses a receiver (302, 402, 502, 602) to acquire a digital sample of a communication signal, and extracts at least one feature of the digital sample. The node (102, 106, 107) employs a classifier (306, 406, 506) to determine the signal type, and a transmitter (108) to send feature vectors including information representing the signal type to other nodes (102, 106, 107) in the network (100).