Spectrum and energy efficiency of cooperative spectrum prediction in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, the spectrum and energy efficiency of cooperative spectrum prediction (CSP) in cognitive radio networks are investigated. In addition, the performance of cooperative spectrum prediction is evaluated using a hidden Markov model (HMM) and a multilayer perceptron (MLP) neural network. The cooperation between secondary users in predicting the next channel status employs AND, OR and majority rule fusion schemes. These schemes are compared for HMM and MLP predictors as a function of channel occupancy in term of prediction error, spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency. The impact of busy and idle state prediction errors on the spectrum efficiency is also investigated. Simulation results are presented which show a significant improvement in the spectrum efficiency of the secondary users CSP with the majority rule at the cost of a small degradation in energy efficiency compared to single spectrum prediction and traditional spectrum sensing.

     

Optimal distributed power allocation for a new spectrum sharing paradigm in cognitive radio networks

The problem of power allocation in cognitive radio networks plays an important role to improve the efficiency of spectrum utilization. However, most of previous works focus on the power allocation for secondary users in spectrum sharing overlay or spectrum sharing underlay, which needs to frequently handoff between the idle spectrum bands or considers the interference constraints in all spectrum bands respectively. In order to reduce the handoff and fully utilize the spectrum resource, we propose a new spectrum sharing paradigm which not only can just need to adjust the transmit power in spectrum bands instead of frequently handoff between idle spectrum bands, but can fully utilize the spectrum resource as we only consider the interference power constraints in active spectrum bands rather than in all spectrum bands. Then based on this new spectrum sharing paradigm and the constraint conditions, we study the distributed power allocation for secondary users and formulate the optimization problem as a non-cooperative game problem, after that the variational inequality approach is used to solve this game problem and a Nash equilibria solution is got, finally simulation results are illustrated to demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme.     

Secure centralized spectrum sensing for cognitive radio networks

Spectrum utilization becomes more and more important while new communication techniques keep increasing and the spectrum bands remain finite. Cognitive radio is a revolutionary technology to make use of the spectrum more effectively. In order to avoid the interference to the primary user, spectrum sensing must be sensitive and reliable. Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is one of the ways to increase the reliability of spectrum sensing. The information fusion technique is a key component of CSS. In this paper, we proposed a novel fusion scheme based on spatial correlation technique. We utilize geographical information with reputational weights to propose a two-level fusion scheme called secure centralized spectrum sensing (SCSS). The simulation results show that as the attackers present high density aggregation at some areas, the correct sensing ratio of SCSS is increasing as well even when the number of attackers is very large.     

Spectrum management in cognitive radio ad hoc networks

The problem of spectrum scarcity and inefficiency in spectrum usage will be addressed by the newly emerging cognitive radio paradigm that allows radios to opportunistically transmit in the vacant portions of the spectrum already assigned to licensed users. For this, the ability for spectrum sensing, spectrum sharing, choosing the best spectrum among the available options, and dynamically adapting transmission parameters based on the activity of the licensed spectrum owners must be integrated within cognitive radio users. Specifically in cognitive radio ad hoc networks, distributed multihop architecture, node mobility, and spatio-temporal variance in spectrum availability are some of the key distinguishing factors. In this article the important features of CRAHNs are presented, along with the design approaches and research challenges that must be addressed. Spectrum management in CRAHNs comprises spectrum sensing, sharing, decision, and mobility. In this article each of these functions are described in detail from the viewpoint of multihop infrastructureless networks requiring cooperation among users.     

Toward secure distributed spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks [cognitive radio communications and networks]

Cognitive radio is a revolutionary technology that promises to alleviate the spectrum shortage problem and to bring about remarkable improvement in spectrum utilization. Spectrum sensing is one of the essential mechanisms of CR and is an active area of research. Although the operational aspects of spectrum sensing are being studied actively, its security aspects have attracted very little attention. In this paper, we discuss security issues that may pose a serious threat to spectrum sensing. Specifically, we focus on two security threats - incumbent emulation and spectrum sensing data falsification - that may wreak havoc in distributed spectrum sensing. We also discuss methods for countering these threats and the technical hurdles that must be overcome to implement such countermeasures.     

A survey on spectrum management in cognitive radio networks [cognitive radio communications and networks]

Cognitive radio networks will provide high bandwidth to mobile users via heterogeneous wireless architectures and dynamic spectrum access techniques. However, CR networks impose challenges due to the fluctuating nature of the available spectrum, as well as the diverse QoS requirements of various applications. Spectrum management functions can address these challenges for the realization of this new network paradigm. To provide a better understanding of CR networks, this article presents recent developments and open research issues in spectrum management in CR networks. More specifically, the discussion is focused on the development of CR networks that require no modification of existing networks. First, a brief overview of cognitive radio and the CR network architecture is provided. Then four main challenges of spectrum management are discussed: spectrum sensing, spectrum decision, spectrum sharing, and spectrum mobility.     

Secure spectrum sensing in relay-based cognitive radio networks

Wireless Networks - A novel cooperative spectrum sensing algorithm intended for robust sensing in the presence of Byzantine attacks was formulated for relay-based cognitive radio networks, with the...     

On spectrum allocation in cognitive radio networks: a double auction-based methodology

Auction is often applied in cognitive radio networks due to its efficiency and fairness properties. An important issue in designing an auction mechanism is how to utilize the limited spectrum resource in an efficient manner. In order to achieve this goal, we propose a predictive double spectrum auction model in this paper. Our auction model first obtains the bidding range from statistical analysis, and then separates the interval into independent states and employees a Markovian prediction based algorithm to generate guidelines for the bidding range of primary and secondary users, respectively. Comparing with existing approaches, our proposed auction model is more efficient in spectrum utilization and satisfies the economic properties. Extensive simulation results show that our work achieves an utilization ratio up to 91 %.     

ARQ-based cooperative spectrum sharing protocols for cognitive radio networks

Wireless Networks - In this paper, we propose two cooperative spectrum sharing protocols for cognitive radio networks which consist of an automatic repeat request based primary user with a primary...     

Spectrum sharing in multi-channel cooperative cognitive radio networks: a coalitional game approach

In this paper, we study a coalitional game approach to resource allocation in a multi-channel cooperative cognitive radio network with multiple primary users (PUs) and secondary users (SUs). We propose to form the grand coalition by grouping all PUs and SUs in a set, where each PU can lease its spectrum to all SUs in a time-division manner while the SUs in return assist PUs’ data transmission as relays. We use the solution concept of the core to analyze the stability of the grand coalition, and the solution concept of the Shapley value to fairly divide the payoffs among the users. Due to the convexity of the proposed game, the Shapley value is shown to be in the core. We derive the optimal strategy for the SU, i.e., transmitting its own data or serving as a relay, that maximizes the sum rate of all PUs and SUs. The payoff allocations according to the core and the Shapley value are illustrated by an example, which demonstrates the benefits of forming the grand coalition as compared with non-coalition and other coalition schemes.     

NS-2 based simulation framework for cognitive radio sensor networks

In this paper, we propose a simulation model for cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSNs) which is an attempt to combine the useful properties of wireless sensor networks and cognitive radio networks. The existing simulation models for cognitive radios cannot be extended for this purpose as they do not consider the strict energy constraint in wireless sensor networks. Our proposed model considers the limited energy available for wireless sensor nodes that constrain the spectrum sensing process—an unavoidable operation in cognitive radios. Our model has been thoroughly tested by performing experiments in different scenarios of CRSNs. The results generated by the model have been found accurate which can be considered for realization of CRSNs.     

Low-complexity hierarchical spectrum sharing scheme in cognitive radio networks

Fair and efficient spectrum sharing is an important problem in cognitive radios. In view of the clustering cognitive radio network with capacity-limited common channels, this letter proposes a low-complexity hierarchical spectrum sharing method, which is carried out in two steps. First, the spectrum holes are allocated to clusters in a fair and distributed way by using the list-coloring method. Then, all the channels in every spectrum hole are allocated by cluster head to minimize the outage probability by using the maximum matching method. Such a scheme not only takes a great advantage of the low signaling overhead and computation complexity, but also achieves the suboptimal outage performance which is close to that of the exhaustive search.     

Stochastic spectrum handoff protocols for partially observable cognitive radio networks

Recent studies have been conducted to indicate the ineffective usage of licensed bands due to static spectrum allocation. In order to improve spectrum utilization, cognitive radio (CR) is therefore suggested to dynamically exploit the opportunistic primary frequency spectrums. How to provide efficient spectrum handoff has been considered a crucial issue in the CR networks. Existing spectrum handoff algorithms assume that all the channels can be correctly sensed by the CR users in order to perform appropriate spectrum handoff process. However, this assumption is impractical since excessive time will be required for the CR user to sense the entire spectrum space. In this paper, the partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) is applied to estimate the network information by partially sensing the frequency spectrums. A POMDP-based spectrum handoff (POSH) scheme is proposed to determine the optimal target channel for spectrum handoff according to the partially observable channel state information. Moreover, a POMDP-based multi-user spectrum handoff (M-POSH) protocol is proposed to exploit the POMDP policy into multi-user CR networks by distributing CR users to frequency spectrum bins opportunistically. By adopting the policies resulted from the POSH and M-POSH algorithms for target channel selection, minimal waiting time at each occurrence of spectrum handoff can be achieved which will be feasible for multimedia applications. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed spectrum handoff protocols can effectively minimize the required waiting time for spectrum handoff in the CR networks.     

SNR-based weighted cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is an approach to confront fading environment. However, in conventional cooperative spectrum sensing (CCSS), the difference among the secondary users (SUS) is ignored when SUS suffer from different fading. In this article, a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)-based weighted spectrum sensing scheme is proposed to improve the sensing performance. The sensing performance of the weighted spectrum sensing scheme is then derived. Considering the minor contribution of the SUS with small weighted factor, a selective CSS scheme is proposed, where SUS with low SNR are not selected into cooperative spectrum sensing. The simulation results confirm the analytical results. And the performance of weighted scheme is better than that of conventional schemes. In the case where the SNR of SUS are randomly distributed, the performance of selective scheme is almost the same as the weighted scheme while the number of cooperative SUS is reduced to save the consumption of system resource in cooperation with little additional complexity.     

On-demand ecology-inspired spectrum allocation mechanism for heterogeneous cognitive radio networks

As increasing number of cognitive radio network (CRN) standards are developed in TV White Spaces band with incompatible communication patterns, heterogeneous CRNs coexistence problem could not be avoided. However, most solutions on this problem have not considered CRNs’ actual data transmission demands and weighted fairness simultaneously. Therefore, we would like to introduce a novel On-demand ecological Species Competition based HEterogeneous networks coexistence MEchanism (O-SCHEME) in this paper. Inspired by ecology species competition model, O-SCHEME utilizes an ecology based spectrum allocation mechanism for guaranteeing heterogeneous CRNs’ spectrum shares weighted fairness. And by employing CRNs’ communication spectrum requirement constraints, actual data transmission needs could be satisfied without wasted communication resources. Through both theoretical and simulation analyses, we demonstrate that O-SCHEME can achieve stable and fair spectrum allocations among coexisting networks with high communication efficiency.     

Fast matching pursuit for wideband spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks

Wireless Networks - Wideband spectrum sensing is one of the most challenging components of cognitive radio networks. It should be performed as fast and accurately as possible. Traditional wideband...     

Optimal fusion rule for cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks

In this paper,we analyze performance of cooperative spectrum sensing under counting rules when exponential model is utilized to characterize the burst nature of primary user(PU) link.Our objective is to minimize the average error probability(AEP) so that the link utilization in the considered link achieves its maximum.We derive a closed-form expression of AEP as well as the probability of interference(PoI) by classifying cognitive transmission into six events.Then,we consider the minimization of AEP over counting rules under the constraint of interference.As the solution,we develop an efficient algorithm to evaluate the optimal fusion rule.Finally,we verify our analysis in numerical results.     

Optimal energy-delay tradeoff for opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) has been considered as a promising technology to enhance spectrum efficiency via opportunistic transmission at link level. Basic CR features allow secondary users (SUs) to transmit only when the licensed channel is not occupied by primary users (PUs). However, waiting for an idle time slot may lead to large packet delays and high energy consumption. We further consider that the SU may decide, at any moment, to use another dedicated way of communication (4G) in order to transmit his packets. Thus, we consider an Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) mechanism that takes into account packet delay and energy consumption. We formulate the OSA problem as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) by explicitly considering the energy consumption as well as packets’ delay, which are often ignored in existing OSA solutions. Specifically, we consider a POMDP with an average reward criterion. We derive structural properties of the value function and we show the existence of optimal strategies in the class of the threshold strategies. For implementation purposes, we propose online learning mechanisms that estimate the PU activity and determine the appropriate threshold strategy on the fly. In particular, numerical illustrations validate our theoretical findings.     

Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks: requirements, challenges and design trade-offs [cognitive radio communications]

Opportunistic unlicensed access to the (temporarily) unused frequency bands across the licensed radio spectrum is currently being investigated as a means to increase the efficiency of spectrum usage. Such opportunistic access calls for implementation of safeguards so that ongoing licensed operations are not compromised. Among different candidates, sensing-based access, where the unlicensed users transmit if they sense the licensed band to be free, is particularly appealing due to its low deployment cost and its compatibility with the legacy licensed systems. The ability to reliably and autonomously identify unused frequency bands is envisaged as one of the main functionalities of cognitive radios. In this article we provide an overview of the regulatory requirements and major challenges associated with the practical implementation of spectrum sensing functionality in cognitive radio systems. Furthermore, we outline different design trade-offs that have to be made in order to enhance various aspects of the system's performance.     

A reliable cooperative spectrum detection scheme in cognitive radio networks

Reliable spectrum detection of the primary user (PU) performs an important role in the cognitive radio network since it’s the foundation of other operations. Spectrum sensing and cognitive signal recognition are two key tasks in the development of cognitive radio (CR) technology in both commercial and military applications. However, when the CR terminals receiving signals have little knowledge about the channel or signal types, these two tasks will become much more difficult. In this paper, we propose a reliable cooperative spectrum detection scheme, which combines the cooperative spectrum sensing with distributed cognitive signal recognition. A novel improved cooperative sensing algorithm is achieved by using a credibility weight factor and the “tug-of-war” rule, which is based on the double threshold detection and Dempster–Shafer theory, to determine whether the PU signals exist. In this scheme, cognitive signal recognition can be used to identify the signal type when the PU signal is present. During the cognitive signal recognition processing, the CR terminals make local classification of the received signals by using Daubechies5 wavelet transform and Fractional Fourier Transform, and send their recognition results to the globe decision making center. A distributed processing uses these cognitive terminals’ local results to make final decisions under the Maximum Likelihood estimation algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve good sensing probability and recognition accuracy under the Additive White Gaussian Noise channel.