The main target of CREW is to establish an open federated test platform, which facilitates experimentally-driven research on advanced spectrum sensing, cognitive radio and cognitive networking strategies in view of horizontal and vertical spectrum sharing in licensed and unlicensed bands.The CREW platform incorporates 5 individual wireless testbeds (heterogeneous ISM @ iMinds-Gent, heterogeneous licensed @ TCD-Dublin, cellular @ TUD-Dresden, wireless sensor @ TUB-Berlin, outdoor heterogeneous ISM/TVWS @ JSI-Ljubljana) augmented with SoA cognitive sensing platforms from IMEC (Belgium) and TCS (France).CREW will physically and virtually federate components by linking together software and hardware entities from different partners using a standardized transceiver API, realizing advanced cognitive sensing functionality. In addition, the CREW federation will establish a benchmarking framework, enabling experiments under controlled and reproducible test conditions and providing methodologies for automated performance analysis, allowing a fair comparison between different cognitive concepts or between subsequent developments. Data sets created under benchmarked conditions according to a common data structure enable the emulation of CREW components in other experimental or simulation environments.The basic CREW federation will be operational at the end of the first year for external use. Through three open calls (at month 12, month 24 and month 36) external experimenters will be attracted for using the CREW platform, leading to an open and demand-driven expansion of the federation and its usage.Along with the federation activities, a strong interaction with the FIRE coordination and support actions will be realized, hereby ensuring maximal compliance of the CREW platform to the overall vision of the FIRE facilities.Finally, the CREW project will implement a sustainability business model for exploitation of the federated testbed from year 4 on and beyond the project.