Cognitive radio networks use dynamic spectrum access of secondary users (SUs) to deal with the problem of radio spectrum scarcity. In this paper, we investigate the SU performance in cognitive radio networks with reactive-decision spectrum handoff. During transmission, a SU may get interrupted several times due to the arrival of primary (licensed) users. After each interruption in the reactive spectrum handoff, the SU performs spectrum sensing to determine an idle channel for retransmission. We develop two continuous-time Markov chain models with and without an absorbing state to study the impact of system parameters such as sensing time and sensing room size on several SU performance measures. These measures include the mean delay of a SU, the variance of the SU delay, the SU interruption probability, the average number of interruptions that a SU experiences, the probability of a SU getting discarded from the system after an interruption and the SU blocking probability upon arrival.

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Osama SALAMEH †, † †a) , Koen DE TURCK † † †b) , Dieter FIEMS †c) , Herwig BRUNEEL †d) , Nonmembers, and Sabine WITTEVRONGEL †e) , Member SUMMARY In Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs), spectrum sensing is performed by secondary (unlicensed) users to utilize transmission opportunities, so-called white spaces or spectrum holes, in the primary (licensed) frequency bands. Secondary users (SUs) perform sensing upon arrival to find an idle channel for transmission as well as during transmission to avoid interfering with primary users (PUs). In practice, spectrum sensing is not perfect and sensing errors including false alarms and misdetections are inevitable. In this paper, we develop a continuous-time Markov chain model to study the effect of false alarms and misdetections of SUs on several performance measures including the collision rate between PUs and SUs, the throughput of SUs and the SU delay in a CRN. Numerical results indicate that sensing errors can have a high impact on the performance measures.