Cognitive radio CDMA networking with spectrum sensing

In this paper, the performance of cognitive radio (CR) code division multiple access (CDMA) systems is analyzed. More precisely, CR users belong to a cognitive radio network (CRN), which coexists with a primary radio network (PRN). Both CRN and PRN are CDMA‐based, with colocated base stations. Soft hand off and power control are considered in both the CRN and the PRN. Upon the development of an accurate simulator for a representative three‐cell cellular scenario, we evaluate the performance of the proposed CR system in terms of outage probability, blocking probability and average data rate of secondary users. Three different spectrum sensing techniques are. Two new schemes, based on interference limit, are proposed and compared with an existing adaptive spectrum sensing scheme. Spectrum activity measurements and spectrum sharing decisions have been considered for evaluating the performance of the three schemes. The paper proposes a new CR‐CDMA networking model and a simulation testbed for evaluating performances of secondary users and primary users in terms of outage, blocking, BER and average data rate in the presence of soft hand‐off and power control. For comparison purposes, the analysis in the absence of spectrum sensing is also investigated.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.