SUMMARYCognitive radio is always based on spectrum sensing to cognize the physical characteristics of the wireless channel and carry out wireless communication resource scheduling. This kind of method makes it hard for cognitive radio to respond to a change in the radio environment in advance. Therefore, both the predictive ability and cognitive contents are limited. This paper proposes a new system called visual cognitive radio, which uses visual information to cognize the radio environment. Visual observation has a good predictive ability and abundant cognitive information, which enables the visual cognitive radio to react to the frequent change in the radio environment and make optimal configurations to the process of wireless communication. This paper presents a typical communication scene as an example to explain the advantages of visual cognitive radio, and also makes a preliminary analysis of its applications and challenges. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.