A weighted cooperative spectrum sensing framework for infrastructure-based cognitive radio networks

Spectrum sensing plays a critical role in cognitive radio networks. A good sensing scheme can reduce the false alarm probability and the miss detection probability, and thus improves spectrum utilization. This paper presents a weighted cooperative spectrum sensing framework for infrastructure-based cognitive radio networks, to increase the spectrum sensing accuracy. The framework contains two modules. In the first module, each cognitive radio performs local spectrum sensing and computes the total error probability, which combines the false alarm probability and the miss detection probability. The total error probability and the energy signal from the primary user are then sent to the base station. In the second module, the base station makes a final decision after combining the weighted energy signals from all cognitive radios. The final decision is then broadcasted back to all cognitive radios. To reduce the computation complexity and communication overhead, the base station also instructs the cognitive radios that have large total error probabilities not to report their local sensing results. We have developed a theoretical model for the proposed framework, and derived the optimal detection threshold, as well as the minimum number of cognitive radios required to participate in cooperative sensing, subject to a given total error probability. Numerical results verify that the proposed weighted cooperative spectrum sensing framework significantly improves the sensing accuracy.     

A cognitive management framework for spectrum selection

To increase cognitive radio (CR) operation efficiency, there has been an interest in enhancing the awareness level of spectrum utilization. In this context, this paper builds a new cognitive management functional architecture for spectrum selection (SS). It relies on a knowledge manager (KM) retaining a set of advanced statistics that track the suitability of spectral resources to support a set of heterogeneous applications under varying interference conditions. Based on this architecture, a novel proactive strategy is proposed for both SS and spectrum mobility (SM) functionalities. The required interactions between the proposed decision-making processes are described, and their capability to exhibit robustness to unexpected changes in the radio environment is highlighted. The results show that the proposed strategy efficiently exploits the KM support for low loads, while the SM functionality introduces significant gains for high loads with respect to other strategies. Finally, to assess the practicality of the proposed approach, the signaling requirements in the radio interface are evaluated.     

Distributed cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio for ad hoc networks

Cognitive radio refers to an intelligent radio with the capability of sensing the radio environment and dynamically reconfiguring the operating parameters. Recent research has focused on using cognitive radios in ad hoc environments. Spectrum sensing is the most important aspect of successful cognitive radio ad hoc network deployment to overcome spectrum scarcity. Multiple cognitive radio users can cooperate to sense the primary user and improve sensing performance. Cognitive radio ad hoc networks are dynamic in nature and have no central point for data fusion. In this paper, gradient-based fully distributed cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio is proposed for ad hoc networks. The licensed band used for TV transmission is considered the primary user. The gradient field changes with the energy sensed by cognitive radios, and the gradient is calculated based on the components, which include energy sensed by secondary users and received from neighbors. The proposed scheme was evaluated from the perspective of reliable sensing, convergence time, and energy consumption. Simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

Analytical modeling for spectrum handoff decision in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive Radio (CR) is an emerging technology used to significantly improve the efficiency of spectrum utilization. Although some spectrum bands in the primary user’s licensed spectrum are intensively used, most of the spectrum bands remain underutilized. The introduction of open spectrum and dynamic spectrum access lets the secondary (unlicensed) users, supported by cognitive radios; opportunistically utilize the unused spectrum bands. However, if a primary user returns to a band occupied by a secondary user, the occupied spectrum band is vacated immediately by handing off the secondary user’s call to another idle spectrum band. Multiple spectrum handoffs can severely degrade quality of service (QoS) for the interrupted users. To avoid multiple handoffs, when a licensed primary user appears at the engaged licensed band utilized by a secondary user, an effective spectrum handoff procedure should be initiated to maintain a required level of QoS for secondary users. In other words, it enables the channel clearing while searching for target vacant channel(s) for completing unfinished transmission. This paper proposes prioritized proactive spectrum handoff decision schemes to reduce the handoff delay and the total service time. The proposed schemes have been modeled using a preemptive resume priority (PRP) M/G/1 queue to give a high priority to interrupted users to resume their transmission ahead of any other uninterrupted secondary user. The performance of proposed handoff schemes has been evaluated and compared against the existing spectrum handoff schemes. Experimental results show that the schemes developed here outperform the existing schemes in terms of average handoff delay and total service time under various traffic arrival rates as well as service rates.     

Vulnerabilities in cognitive radio networks: A survey

Cognitive radio networks are envisioned to drive the next generation wireless networks that can dynamically optimize spectrum use. However, the deployment of such networks is hindered by the vulnerabilities that these networks are exposed to. Securing communications while exploiting the flexibilities offered by cognitive radios still remains a daunting challenge. In this survey, we put forward the security concerns and the vulnerabilities that threaten to plague the deployment of cognitive radio networks. We classify various types of vulnerabilities and provide an overview of the research challenges. We also discuss the various techniques that have been devised and analyze the research developments accomplished in this area. Finally, we discuss the open research challenges that must be addressed if cognitive radio networks were to become a commercially viable technology.     

Spectrum sensing algorithms for primary detection based on reliability in cognitive radio systems

One of the main requirements of cognitive radio systems is the ability to detect the presence of the primary user with fast speed and high accuracy. To achieve that, in this paper, we propose a spectrum sensing scheme by considering the reliability of spectrum sensing. Only the user with no reliable information will perform spectrum sensing again using one-order feature detection. Otherwise, the user directly transmits its binary decision (0 or 1) to the MAC layer. The performance of the one-order feature detection is studied and numerical results are presented to show that the one-order feature detector can perform better than the energy detector due to its robustness to the noise uncertainty. Since the feature detection is performed in time domain, the real-time operation and low-power consumption can be achieved. Furthermore, the performance of proposed spectrum sensing scheme based on reliability is also deduced and the analysis of the performance results indicate that the sensing performance is greatly improved as opposed to energy detector. However, due to the effects of channel fading/shadowing, individual cognitive radios may be not able to reliably detect the existence of a primary user. To solve this problem, cooperative sensing among secondary users are studied using the methodology proposed in this paper. The performance of cooperative spectrum sensing is investigated when various decision fusion rules are applied. We find that, regardless of the decision fusion rule used, the sensing performance can be significantly improved compared to conventional cooperative methods.     

Application of reinforcement learning for security enhancement in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio network (CRN) enables unlicensed users (or secondary users, SUs) to sense for and opportunistically operate in underutilized licensed channels, which are owned by the licensed users (or primary users, PUs). Cognitive radio network (CRN) has been regarded as the next-generation wireless network centered on the application of artificial intelligence, which helps the SUs to learn about, as well as to adaptively and dynamically reconfigure its operating parameters, including the sensing and transmission channels, for network performance enhancement. This motivates the use of artificial intelligence to enhance security schemes for CRNs. Provisioning security in CRNs is challenging since existing techniques, such as entity authentication, are not feasible in the dynamic environment that CRN presents since they require pre-registration. In addition these techniques cannot prevent an authenticated node from acting maliciously. In this article, we advocate the use of reinforcement learning (RL) to achieve optimal or near-optimal solutions for security enhancement through the detection of various malicious nodes and their attacks in CRNs. RL, which is an artificial intelligence technique, has the ability to learn new attacks and to detect previously learned ones. RL has been perceived as a promising approach to enhance the overall security aspect of CRNs. RL, which has been applied to address the dynamic aspect of security schemes in other wireless networks, such as wireless sensor networks and wireless mesh networks can be leveraged to design security schemes in CRNs. We believe that these RL solutions will complement and enhance existing security solutions applied to CRN To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey article that focuses on the use of RL-based techniques for security enhancement in CRNs.     

Proportional and double imitation rules for spectrum access in cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we tackle the problem of opportunistic spectrum access in large-scale cognitive radio networks, where the unlicensed Secondary Users (SUs) access the frequency channels partially occupied by the licensed Primary Users (PUs). Each channel is characterized by an availability probability unknown to the SUs. We apply population game theory to model the spectrum access problem and develop distributed spectrum access policies based on imitation, a behavior rule widely applied in human societies consisting of imitating successful behaviors. We develop two imitation-based spectrum access policies based on the basic Proportional Imitation (PI) rule and the more advanced Double Imitation (DI) rule given that a SU can only imitate the other SUs operating on the same channel. A systematic theoretical analysis is presented for both policies on the induced imitation dynamics and the convergence properties of the proposed policies to the Nash equilibrium. Simple and natural, the proposed imitation-based spectrum access policies can be implemented distributedly based on solely local interactions and thus is especially suited in decentralized adaptive learning environments as cognitive radio networks.     

On neighbor discovery in cognitive radio networks

A cognitive radio node is a radio device capable of operating over multiple channels. As a result, a network consisting of one or more cognitive radio nodes can adapt to varying channel availability in its geographical region by dynamically changing the channel (or channels) nodes are using for communication.     

A stackelberg game for spectrum leasing in cooperative cognitive radio networks

According to the property-rights model of cognitive radio, primary users (PUs) who own the spectrum resource have the right to lease part of spectrum to secondary users (SUs) in exchange for appropriate profit. In this paper, we propose a pricing-based spectrum leasing framework between one PU and multiple SUs. In this scenario, the PU attempts to maximize its utility by setting the price of spectrum. Then, the selected SUs have the right to decide their power levels to help PU’s transmission, aiming to obtain corresponding access time. The spectrum leasing problem can be cast into a stackelberg game, where the PU plays the seller-level game and the selected SUs play the buyer-level game. Through analysis based on the backward induction, we prove that there exists a unique equilibrium in the stackelberg game with certain constraints. Numerical results show that the proposed pricing-based spectrum leasing framework is effective, and the performance of both PU and SUs is improved, compared to the traditional mechanism without cooperation.     

An analysis on decentralized adaptive MAC protocols for cognitive radio networks

The scarcity of bandwidth in the radio spectrum has become more vital since the demand for more and more wireless applications has increased. Most of the spectrum bands have been allocated although many studies have shown that these bands are significantly underutilized most of the time. The problem of unavailability of spectrum and inefficiency in its utilization has been smartly addressed by the cognitive radio (CR) technology which is an opportunistic network that senses the environment, observes the network changes, and then uses knowledge gained from the prior interaction with the network to make intelligent decisions by dynamically adapting their transmission characteristics. In this paper, some of the decentralized adaptive medium access control (MAC) protocols for CR networks have been critically analyzed, and a novel adaptive MAC protocol for CR networks, decentralized non-global MAC (DNG-MAC), has been proposed. The results show the DNG-MAC outperforms other CR-MAC protocols in terms of time and energy efficiency.     

ICSSSS: An intelligent channel selection scheme for cognitive radio ad hoc networks using a self organized map followed by simple segregation

In Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks (CRAHNS), several spectrum bands with different channel characteristics may be available over a large frequency range. It is essential to identify the most appropriate spectrum band correctly which allow the Secondary Users (SUs) to exploit the band without disturbing the Primary Users (PUs). Many channel selection solutions, based on cooperative spectrum sensing, have been employed for this purpose depending on their prediction models for primary users’ activities. In practice, cooperative spectrum sensing cannot completely solve the sensing problems which are false alarm and miss detection, especially in heavily shadowed or fading environment. This paper presents, ICSSSS, as an Intelligent Channel Selection Scheme for cognitive radio ad hoc network using Self organized map followed by simple Segregation. The contribution of the proposed scheme is twofold: using an unsupervised learnable Self Organizing Map (SOM) method to efficiently minimize the probability of the sensing errors (false alarm and miss detection), in addition to segregated channel selection strategy to speed up the search for the available best channel. Simulation results based on NS2 simulations show that the proposed scheme can be used with the advantage of better performance than other existing channel selection strategies.     

Distributed power adjustment based on control theory for cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we propose two power adjustment methods for cognitive radio networks. In the first algorithm, the transmitter derives the transmission power with PID control in order to satisfy the QoS constraints in secondary networks. The derived transmission power is compared with a constraint condition in order to avoid the interference with primary networks, and then the actual transmission power is decided. Because the constraint condition affects the performance of our proposed method significantly, we propose an effective update algorithm. On the other hand, the second algorithm is based on model predictive control (MPC). In this method, the decision of transmission power is formulated as quadratic programming (QP) problem and the transmission power is derived directly with the constraint condition. We evaluate the performances of our proposed methods with simulation and compare the proposed methods with the distributed power control (DPC) method. In numerical examples, we show that our proposed methods are more effective than the existing method in some situations. We also prove analytically that the interference with primary networks can be avoided with probability one by using our proposed method if each transmitter has the information about every channel gain.     

ML aided context feature extraction for cognitive radio

This paper addresses the estimation of different context features of a primary user network, such as transmitters’ positions, antenna patterns and directions, and propagation model characteristics. It is based on radio signal strength measurements obtained by a sensor network without any prior knowledge about the configuration of the primary transmitters in terms of antenna types or propagation model. A Maximum Likelihood Aided Context Feature Extraction (MLACFE) method is introduced based on applying image processing and a Maximum Likelihood estimation algorithm over the set of measurements to identify the existing transmitters in the scenario and their parameters. The proposed method can provide a quite similar performance than a classical ML method, in terms of average estimation errors while at the same time reducing the computation time in about three orders of magnitude, for the considered case study.     

Centralized and distributed spectrum channel assignment in cognitive wireless networks: A Harmony Search approach

This paper gravitates on the spectrum channel allocation problem where each compounding node of a cognitive radio network is assigned a frequency channel for transmission over a given outgoing link, based on optimizing an overall network performance metric dependant on the level of interference among nearby nodes. In this context, genetically inspired algorithms have been extensively used so far for solving this optimization problem in a computationally efficient manner. This work extends previous preliminary research carried out by the authors on the application of the heuristic Harmony Search (HS) algorithm to this scenario by presenting further results and derivations on both HS-based centralized and distributed spectrum allocation techniques. Among such advances, a novel adaptive island-like distributed allocation procedure is presented, which dramatically decreases the transmission rate required for exchanging control traffic among nodes at a quantifiable yet negligible performance penalty. Extensive simulation results executed over networks of increasing size verify, on one hand, that our proposed technique achieves near-optimum spectral channel assignments at a low computational complexity. On the other hand, the obtained results assess that HS vastly outperforms genetically inspired allocation algorithms for the set of simulated scenarios. Finally, the proposed adaptive distributed allocation approach is shown to attain a control traffic bandwidth saving of more than 90% with respect to the naive implementation of a HS-based island allocation procedure.     

Quorum-based channel hopping scheme for cognitive radio networks

In this paper, the effects of the generalized exponent, the height and the zenith angle on the log-amplitude variance in the weak fluctuation are investigated. The theoretical results indicate that for the downlink, the log-amplitude variance of the Kolmogorov model is always smaller than that of the three-layer model, while for the uplink, there is a point of intersection in the log-amplitude variance curves of the two models. The different phenomena for the downlink and uplink are analyzed in detail. Further, we find a method to ascertain precise values of the boundary layer altitudes for the three-layer model under various atmospheric conditions through the analysis for the point of intersection. And at the point of intersection, the Kolmogorov model can be used to replace the three-layer model to simplify the analysis of the system performance. Moreover, the log-amplitude variance increases with the increase of the zenith angle.     

集中式认知网络分簇算法研究

认知网络按照一定的准则划分为若干个簇,簇内共享一条信道用于交换控制信息,这种以分簇的方式实现按区域共享信道是认知无线电频谱共享问题的解决方法之一。针对认知网络空闲信道的特性,提出了一种考虑可用信道、地理位置以及数据库统计值的新的分簇算法,该算法以最大化簇内吞吐量和维持簇结构稳定为设计目的;讨论了几个关键的簇维护和管理问题。仿真结果表明,提出的分簇算法在产生的簇总数量以及簇的重构次数上可以获得一个较好的综合性能。