Medium Access Control Signaling for Reliable Spectrum Agile Radios

Abstract

We address the problem of collaborative sensing in cognitive radios. In a cognitive radio network, all the nodes may sense the spectrum simultaneously. They should then exchange their sensing results in order to improve the reliability of the detection. This exchange of information has to be done efficiently to improve on the bandwidth efficiency of the network. We propose a medium access control (MAC) signaling protocol and study its performance behavior. For the case of a single-band channel, we present a thorough analysis of the proposed protocol and use the results to pick the protocol parameters that minimizes the signaling time for a given probability of detection. Analysis of the proposed protocol for multiband channels is solved by introducing a matrix formulation of the proposed protocol that allows its evaluation numerically. Globecom 2009This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Abstract-We address the problem of collaborative sensing in cognitive radios. In a cognitive radio network, all the nodes may sense the spectrum simultaneously. They should then exchange their sensing results in order to improve the reliability of the detection. This exchange of information has to be done efficiently to improve on the bandwidth efficiency of the network. We propose a medium access control (MAC) signaling protocol and study its performance behavior. For the case of a single-band channel, we present a thorough analysis of the proposed protocol and use the results to pick the protocol parameters that minimizes the signaling time for a given probability of detection. Analysis of the proposed protocol for multiband channels is solved by introducing a matrix formulation of the proposed protocol that allows its evaluation numerically.

Random Access Protocols for Collaborative Spectrum Sensing in Multi-Band Cognitive Radio Networks

“…This paper extends our earlier work [21] where we proposed a random access protocol for collaborative exchange of sensing information using a DCC. In [21], we assumed that only a single-band channel was available for communications among SUs.…”

“…The simplistic assumption that the probability of detection is the same for all SUs was also made. This work generalizes the contributions of [21] in a number of ways:…”

“…In [21], we assumed that only a single-band channel was available for communications among SUs. The simplistic assumption that the probability of detection is the same for all SUs was also made.…”

“…• The protocol proposed in [21], for a single-band case, was nonadaptive, i.e., the protocol parameters were optimized and set fixed a priori. In this paper, we show that although this protocol behaves robustly in a single band network, in the sense that it is relatively insensitive to variation of the network parameters, it behaves poorly in a multi-band network, when the MAC/signaling protocol parameters are slightly varied around their optimal settings.…”