A conventional cognitive radio network (CRN) uses the spectrum of the licensed primary network (PN) on the premise of detecting the absence of the PN by the spectrum sensing of the sensor node (SN). In this paper, a cooperative multiband CRN is considered, wherein the SNs are allowed to use some time of the transmission slot to relay PN data by cooperative communication, while using the remaining time of the transmission slot to forward its own data, over multiple sub-bands during each frame, if the presence of PN is detected by cooperative spectrum sensing of the SNs in the sensing slot. A new sensing-throughput tradeoff scheme is formulated as a multi-variable optimization problem, which maximizes the average aggregate throughput of the CRN over all the sub-bands by jointly optimizing spectrum sensing time and sub-band transmission power, subject to the constraints on the average aggregate throughput of the PN, the maximal aggregate power of each SN, and the false alarm and detection probabilities of each sub-band. The bi-level optimization method is adopted to obtain the optimal solution by dividing the multi-variable optimization problem into two convex single-variable suboptimization problems. The simulations show that there exists the optimal sensing time and sub-band transmission power that maximize the average aggregate throughput of the CRN and, compared with the conventional scheme, the throughput obtained by the proposed scheme is outstanding.
INTRODUCTIONWith the high development of wireless communications and the rapid increase of user requirements, traditional static spectrum allocation methodology has caused a shortage of spectrum resources [1]. However, recent measurements by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have shown that 70% of the allocated spectrum in the USA has not been well utilized [2]. Hence, based on cognitive radio, the cognitive radio network (CRN), as a novel intelligent wireless sensing network, is proposed to overcome the scarcity problem of the spectrum by reusing frequency bands allocated to the primary network (PN) [3]. In order to avoid causing severe interference to the PN, before communications, the sensor node (SN) needs to identify the idle spectrum by performing spectrum sensing [4].Energy detection is the most common method in the spectrum sensing of CRN because of its simple implementation without any prior information of the PN's signal, but it shows lower correct detection performance if the PN is shadowed or in serious fading as a hidden terminal [5,6]. Cooperative spectrum sensing is proposed to overcome the hidden terminal problem, which may generate sensing diversity gain by combining the sensing results of multiple SNs [7]. In cooperative spectrum sensing, each SN performs energy sensing independently, and then reports its local sensing result to a coordinator that combines all the received sensing results for obtaining a final decision on the presence of the PN [8,9]. Cooperative communication is one of the fastest-growing areas of wireless communicati...