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To address the common issues in traditional convolutional neural network (CNN)-based spectrum sensing algorithms in cognitive radio networks (CRNs), including inadequate signal feature representation, inefficient utilization of feature map information, and limited feature extraction capabilities due to shallow network structures, this paper proposes a spectrum sensing algorithm based on a short-time Fourier transform (STFT) and residual attention dense network (RADN). Specifically, the RADN model improves the basic residual block and introduces the convolutional block attention module (CBAM), combining residual connections and dense connections to form a powerful deep feature extraction structure known as residual in dense (RID). This significantly enhances the network's feature extraction capabilities. By performing STFT on the received signals and normalizing them, the signals are converted into time–frequency spectrograms as network inputs, better capturing signal features. The RADN is trained to extract abstract features from the time–frequency images, and the trained RADN serves as the final classifier for spectrum sensing. Experimental results demonstrate that the STFT-RADN spectrum sensing method significantly improves performance under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions compared to traditional deep-learning-based methods. This method not only adapts to various modulation schemes but also exhibits high detection probability and strong robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the deficiency of radio spectrum resources caused by the progress in technology, cognitive radio networks (CRNs) have made significant progress. CRNs have two types of users, namely, primary users (PUs) and secondary users (SUs). Considering that PUs have a higher priority and diversified data transmission requirements, this study divides PUs into two levels, namely, PU1s with a higher priority and PU2s with a lower priority. On the other hand, the occurrence of failures is inevitable in CRNs, which affects the data transmission of users. In this paper, combined with an adjustable PU packets transmission rate mechanism, a communication failure and repair mechanism with classified PUs based on the single-channel CRNs is proposed, and different preemption principles are set according to different system states. A queueing model is established and analyzed with a Markov chain, the performance index expressions that need targeted research are listed, numerical experiments are conducted, and the system performance change trends are obtained. The comparison experiment shows that the proposed communication failure and repair mechanism with classified PUs can improve the throughput of PU1 packets and reduce the blocking rate of PU1 packets compared with the conventional communication failure and repair mechanisms with unclassified PUs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive radio networks, channel assembling allows secondary users (SUs) to expand network capacity and improve spectrum utilization. Scheduling strategies only based on heterogeneous service classification cannot guarantee the delivery priority of vital elastic services in special scenarios such as emergency rescue. Therefore, a priority scheduling strategy with reserved queue (Ps-rq) is proposed in this work. A static factor is defined to classify SUs into elastic services and real-time services based on message type, while a dynamic factor is defined to differentiate high-priority elastic services based on information validity, message correlation and message size. The high-priority users in the interrupted elastic services are placed in the reserved queue to ensure its services. Accordingly, the scheduling algorithm and the dynamic channel access process is presented. A continuous-time Markov chain analysis is conducted and all possible transition states, trigger events, transition rates and transition conditions of the system starting from a general state are derived. Furthermore, evaluation indexes of system performance are obtained. Study cases and simulation results prove that the proposed strategy can enhance network capacity, reduce blocking probability and forced termination probability for secondary users, and notably enhance the performance of high-priority elastic services. In addition, we analyze the characteristics of Ps-rq through a comprehensive comparison with four other schemes. The experiment proves that the Ps-rq strategy can effectively improve the service quality of the vital elastic services on the basis of providing fair scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the domain of cognitive radio (CR), unlicensed users have the opportunity to efficiently use available spectrum bands without interfering with licensed primary users (PUs). Our study addresses the challenge of secondary user (SU) spectrum shortage due to high arrival rates of licensed users. We propose two models aimed at improving the average total waiting time for SUs in such scenarios. These models incorporate non-acquired and preemptive priority mechanisms within the M/D/1 model of a PU delay system. Through quantitative evaluations and Monte Carlo simulations, we evaluate the performance of these models. Our findings show significant improvements in average waiting time for both PUs and SUs, especially under the priority scheme. Furthermore, we explore these models in the context of real-time systems, considering the limited buffer capacity for both user types. This further improves the average waiting time for PUs and SUs in both priority schemes. Our contribution lies in providing effective solutions to mitigate SU shortages in CR networks, providing insight into priority-based approaches and real-time system considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on achieving the low-cost coexistence of the networks in an unlicensed spectrum by making them operate on non-overlapping channels. For achieving this goal, we first give a universal convergence analysis framework for the unlicensed spectrum allocation algorithm. Then, a one-timescale iteration-adjustable unlicensed spectrum allocation algorithm is developed, where the step size and timescale parameter can be jointly adjusted based on the system performance requirement and signal overhead concern. After that, we derive the sufficient condition for the one-timescale algorithm. Furthermore, the upper bound of convergence error of the one-timescale spectrum allocation algorithm is obtained. Due to the multi-timescale evolution of the network states in the wireless network, we further propose a two-timescale iteration-adjustable joint frequency selection and frequency allocation algorithm, where the frequency selection iteration timescale is set according to the slow-changing statistical channel state information (CSI), whereas the frequency allocation iteration timescale is set according to the fast-changing local CSI. Then, we derive the convergence condition of two-timescale algorithms and the upper bound of the corresponding convergence error. The experimentalresults show that the small timescale adjustment parameter and large step size can help decrease the convergence error. Moreover, compared with traditional algorithms, the two-timescale policy can achieve throughput similar to traditional algorithms with very low iteration overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relay-assisted hybrid beamforming plays an inevitable role in enhancing network coverage, transmission range, and spectral efficiency while simultaneously reducing hardware cost, power consumption, and hardware implementation complexity. This study investigates a cognitive radio network (CRN)-based hybrid wideband transceiver for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) decode-and-forward (DF) relay-assisted multiuser (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. It is worth mentioning that the underlying problem has not been addressed so far, which is a real motivation behind the proposed algorithm. The joint optimization of hybrid processing components and the constant amplitude constraints imposed by the analog beamforming solution make this problem non-convex and NP-hard. Furthermore, the analog beamformer common to all sub-carriers is another challenging aspect of the underlying problem. To derive the frequency-flat analog processing component in the radio frequency (RF) domain and frequency-dependent baseband processing matrices in the baseband domain, the original complicated problem is reformulated as two single-hop sum-rate maximization sub-problems. Taking advantage of this decomposition, the sum spectral efficiency is maximized through RF precoding and combining. On the other hand, the impact of interference among transmitted data streams and inter-user interference (IUI) is minimized via baseband processing matrices. Finally, computer simulations are conducted by changing system parameters, considering both perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves performance close to full-complexity precoding and outperforms other well-known hybrid beamforming techniques. Specifically, more than 95% efficiency is achieved with perfect CSI, and more than 90% efficiency is attained under the assumption of 30% error in the estimated channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The channel-hopping-based rendezvous is essential to alleviate the problem of under-utilization and scarcity of the spectrum in cognitive radio networks. It dynamically allows unlicensed secondary users to schedule rendezvous channels using the assigned hopping sequence to guarantee the self-organization property in a limited time. In this paper, we use the interleaving technique to cleverly construct a set of asynchronous channel-hopping sequences consisting of d sequences of period x N 2 with flexible parameters, which can generate sequences of different lengths. By this advantage, the new designed CHSs can be used to adapt to the demands of various communication scenarios. Furthermore, we focus on the improved maximum-time-to-rendezvous and maximum-first-time-to-rendezvous performance of the new construction compared to the prior research at the same sequence length. The new channel-hopping sequences ensure that rendezvous occurs between any two sequences and the rendezvous times are random and unpredictable when using licensed channels under asynchronous access, although the full degree-of-rendezvous is not satisfied. Our simulation results show that the new construction is more balanced and unpredictable between the maximum-time-to-rendezvous and the mean and variance of time-to-rendezvous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid advancement of wireless communication combined with insufficient spectrum exploitation opens the door for the expansion of novel wireless services. Cognitive radio network (CRN) technology makes it possible to periodically access the open spectrum bands, which in turn improves the effectiveness of CRNs. Spectrum sensing (SS), which allows unauthorized users to locate open spectrum bands, plays a fundamental part in CRNs. A precise approximation of the power spectrum is essential to accomplish this. On the assumption that each SU's parameter vector contains some globally and partially shared parameters, spectrum sensing is viewed as a parameter estimation issue. Distributed and cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is a key component of this concept. This work introduces a new component-specific cooperative spectrum sensing model (CSCSSM) in CRNs considering the amplitude and phase components of the input signal including Component Specific Adaptive Estimation (CSAE) for mean squared deviation (MSD) formulation. The proposed concept ensures minimum information loss compared to the traditional methods that consider error calculation among the direct signal vectors. The experimental results and performance analysis prove the robustness and efficiency of the proposed work over the traditional methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technology and cognitive radio networks (CRNs) promises to enhance the spectrum utilization efficiency of 5G and beyond-5G (B5G) mobile communication systems. In this article, a NOMA-based spectrum-sharing scheme is proposed for dual-hop CRNs in which a primary transmitter separated by a long distance from the primary receiver communicates via NOMA-based CRN. In this scenario, we mathematically formulate a constrained optimization problem to maximize the sum rate of all secondary users (SUs) while maintaining the total transmit power of the system. Inspired by the effectiveness of computational intelligence (CI) tools in solving non-linear optimization problems, this article proposes three CI-based solutions to the given problem aiming to guarantee quality of service (QoS) for all users. In addition, an enhanced version of the classic artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm, referred to here as the enhanced-artificial-bee-colony (EABC)-based power allocation scheme, is proposed to overcome the limitations of classic ABC. The comparison of different CI approaches illustrates that the minimum power required by the secondary NOMA relay to satisfy the primary rate threshold of 5 bit/s/Hz is 20 mW for EABC, while ABC, PSO and GA achieve the same target at 23 mW, 27 mW and 32 mW, respectively. Thus, EABC reduces power consumption by 13.95% compared to ABC, while 29.78% and 46.15% power-saving is achieved compared to PSO and GA, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary user emulation (PUE) attack is one of the strongest attacks in mobile cognitive radio networks (MCRN) because the primary users (PU) and secondary users (SU) are unable to communicate if a malicious user (MU) is present. In the literature, some techniques are used to detect the attack. However, those techniques do not explore the cooperative detection of PUE attacks using deep neural networks (DNN) in one MCRN network and with experimental results on software-defined radio (SDR). In this paper, we design and implement a PUE attack in an MCRN, including a countermeasure based on the entropy of the signals, DNN, and cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) to detect the attacks. A blacklist is included in the fusion center (FC) to record the data of the MU. The scenarios are simulated and implemented on the SDR testbed. Results show that this solution increases the probability of detection (PD) by 20% for lower signal noise ratio (SNR) values, allowing the detection of the PUE attack and recording the data for future reference by the attacker, sharing the data for all the SU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to increase channel usage efficiency, unlicensed users within a Cognitive Radio Network (CRN) are permitted to utilize channels that are not currently occupied by licensed users. However, ensuring communication between users in a CRN remains a challenge. To overcome this issue, a variety of channel hopping protocols have been developed. Time-invariant channel hopping protocols are vulnerable to attacks, so several channel hopping protocols that are resistant to jamming attacks have been proposed. In the majority of existing anti-jamming protocols, users create their channel hopping sequence using a channel hopping matrix, with the rendezvous probability between two users being determined by the structure of their respective channel hopping matrices. The channel hopping matrices designed by existing methods still have room for improvement. To overcome the difficulty of guaranteeing communication between any pair of users, while also providing protection against jamming attacks and minimizing the time to rendezvous (TTR) in a CRN, this paper presents the Anti-jamming Low-Latency channel hopping (ALL) protocol. This protocol allows a sender to adjust their channel hopping matrix structure to match that of the receiver, thereby improving the chances of successful rendezvous between users. Based on the simulation results, the ALL protocol performs better than the recently proposed practical solution, OLAA, by up to 33% in network throughput and 30% in TTR. On average, ALL outperforms OLAA by 25% in network throughput and 20% in TTR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), the performance of the primary users (PUs) may suffer adverse effects from the secondary users (SUs) if the spectrum of PUs is haphazardly shared with SUs. In this paper, we propose a hybrid cognitive cooperative protocol based on orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) that improves spectrum utilization by allowing the SUs opportunistic access to the spectrum of the Pus, while guaranteeing the performance of the PU. Specifically, the system can switch between non-cognitive transmission mode, underlay OMA mode, and overlay OMA/NOMA mode, according to the automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback of PU. The SU has the opportunity to acquire the spectrum to activate the underlay OMA and overlay OMA/NOMA modes only if it listens to the acknowledge (ACK) or negative acknowledge (NACK) feedback from the PU. In order to describe the switching between these three switching modes, a Markov model is developed to analyze the corresponding steady-state probabilities and end-to-end outage probabilities. So, we derive closed-form expressions for the throughput of PU and SU to investigate the spectrum utilization. Numerical and simulation results show that the proposed hybrid cooperative cognitive protocol outperforms the pure OMA hybrid cooperative cognitive protocol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) has been verified as an effective approach to improve the sensing performances of cognitive radio networks (CRNs). Compared with existing works that commonly consider fusion with fixed inputs and neglect the duration of the reporting period in the design, we novelly investigate a fundamental trade-off among three periods of CSS: sensing, reporting, and transmission periods, and evaluate the impact of the fusion rule with a varying number of local sensing results. To be specific, the sensing time could be traded for additional mini-slots to report more local sensing results for fusion, or it could be traded for longer transmission time. In the CRNs with a given durations of sensing/reporting/transmission periods, we, respectively, formulate the throughput and collision probability and optimize the throughput under the collision constraint. The theoretical results show that, in the specific value intervals of the sensing parameters, the collision constraint provides an upper bound of the number of mini-slots in the reporting period or a lower bound of the sensing duration. We provide the approach to the maximum throughput in some cases.Finally, numerical results are presented to validate theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spectrum demand has increased with the rapid growth of wireless devices and wireless service usage. The rapid development of 5G smart cities and the industrial Internet of Things makes the problem of spectrum resource shortage and increased energy consumption even more severe. To address the issues of high energy consumption for spectrum sensing and low user access rate in the cognitive radio networks (CRN) model powered entirely by energy harvesting, we propose a novel energy harvesting (EH)-distributed cooperative spectrum sensing (DCSS) architecture that allows SUs to acquire from the surrounding environment and radio frequency (RF) signals energy, and an improved distributed cooperative spectrum sensing scheme based on energy-correlation is proposed. First, we formulate an optimization problem to select a leader for each channel; then formulate another optimization problem to select the corresponding cooperative secondary users (SUs). Each channel has a fixed SUs cluster in each time slot to sense the main user state, which can reduce the energy consumption of SUs sensing and can reduce the sensing time, and the remaining time can be used for data transmission to improve throughput, and finally achieve the purpose of improving energy efficiency. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme significantly outperforms the centralized scheme in terms of SUs access capability and energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a novel cooperative underlay cognitive radio network based on non-orthogonal multiple access (CR-NOMA) with adaptive relay selection and power allocation. In secondary networks, dedicated relay assistance and user assistance are used to achieve communication between the base station and the far (and near) user. Here, a two-stage adaptive relay selection and power allocation strategy is proposed to maximize the achievable data rate of the far user while ensuring the service quality of near user. Furthermore, the closed-form expressions of outage probability of two secondary users are derived, respectively, under interference power constraints, revealing the impact of transmit power, number of relays, interference threshold and target data rate on system outage probability. Numerical results and simulations validate the advantages of the established cooperation and show that the proposed adaptive relay selection and power allocation strategy has better outage performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is a vital part of cognitive radio networks, which ensures the existence of the primary user (PU) in the network. However, the presence of malicious users (MUs) highly degrades the performance of the system. In the proposed scheme, each secondary user (SU) reports to the fusion center (FC) with a hard decision of the sensing energy to indicate the existence of the PU. The main contribution of this work deals with MU attacks, specifically spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attacks. In this paper, we propose a correlation-based approach to differentiate between the SUs and the outliers by determining the sensing of each SU, and the average value of sensing information with other SUs, to predict the SSDF attack in the system. The FC determines the abnormality of a SU by determining the similarity for each SU with the remaining SUs by following the proposed scheme and declares the SU as an outlier using the box-whisker plot. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme was demonstrated through simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the expeditious expansion of the wireless network, the unlicensed bandwidth-based devices are growing substantially as compared to the present vacant bandwidth. Cognitive radio networks present a proficient solution to the spectrum shortage diminution hitch by allowing the usage of the vacant part of the spectrum that is not currently in use of the Primary User licensed bandwidth to the secondary user or cognitive radio user. Spectrum management procedure in cognitive radio network comprises of spectrum sharing, sensing and handoff. Spectrum handoff plays a vital role in spectrum management and primarily focuses on single handoff strategies. This paper presents a primary user traffic pattern-based opportunistic spectrum handoff (PUTPOSH) approach to use in the cognitive radio networks. PUTPOSH permits a secondary user to sense the arrival of a primary user and use an opportunistic handoff scheme. The opportunistic handoff scheme firstly detects the arrival of the primary users by energy detection sensing and secondly, it allows a cognitive radio user to decide whether to do handoff or not contingent upon the overall service time to reduce the unused handoffs. The handoffs can either be reactive or proactive based on the arrival rate of the primary user. The simulation results show that the presented PUTPOSH approach (a) minimizes the number of handoffs and the overall service time, and (b) maintains the channel utilization and throughput of the system at a maximal point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, Smart Grids (SGs), as the goal of the next-generation power grid system, span extremely wide aspects from power generation to end-user utilities. In smart grids, Energy and Information flows are mutually dependent and performance degradation of one side may have a high impact on the other side. In this work, we introduce our architecture for monitoring of Wind Turbine (WT) farms in smart grids. In our proposed system an industrial camera is embedded on a Wireless Cognitive Radio node for each WT to capture appropriate images and stream videos to the cognitive coordinator. Any packet loss in transmission between an embedded cognitive node and the coordinator can degrade peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the received images. The image streaming is a delay sensitive transmission which should be done in harsh environments in SGs. To tackle these challenging issues, we introduce our efficient model, called JOPSS, for joint optimization of both packet size and Number of Spectrum Sensing Iterations (NSSI) during image transmission in time-restricted conditions. We define our proposed objective function as the quotient of the Overhead Time and the Effective Transmission Time (ETT). In addition, we introduce our methods based on the Minimum of Overhead Time Channel Selection (MOTS) for the efficient channel selection along with Dynamic Parameter Updating Procedure (DPUP) to benefit different strategies in Mandatory and Proactive Handoffs (MHO/PHO). The obtained results show that noticeable improvements in both PSNR and feature-similarity (FSIM) can be achieved on our models JOPSS and JOPSS-SAFE, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A framework of spectrum sensing with a multi-class hypothesis is proposed to maximize the achievable throughput in cognitive radio networks. The energy range of a sensing signal under the hypothesis that the primary user is absent (in a conventional two-class hypothesis) is further divided into quantized regions, whereas the hypothesis that the primary user is present is conserved. The non-radio frequency energy harvesting-equiped secondary user transmits, when the primary user is absent, with transmission power based on the hypothesis result (the energy level of the sensed signal) and the residual energy in the battery: the lower the energy of the received signal, the higher the transmission power, and vice versa. Conversely, the lower is the residual energy in the node, the lower is the transmission power. This technique increases the throughput of a secondary link by providing a higher number of transmission events, compared to the conventional two-class hypothesis. Furthermore, transmission with low power for higher energy levels in the sensed signal reduces the probability of interference with primary users if, for instance, detection was missed. The familiar machine learning algorithm known as a support vector machine (SVM) is used in a one-versus-rest approach to classify the input signal into predefined classes. The input signal to the SVM is composed of three statistical features extracted from the sensed signal and a number ranging from 0 to 100 representing the percentage of residual energy in the node's battery. To increase the generalization of the classifier, k-fold cross-validation is utilized in the training phase. The experimental results show that an SVM with the given features performs satisfactorily for all kernels, but an SVM with a polynomial kernel outperforms linear and radial-basis function kernels in terms of accuracy. Furthermore, the proposed multi-class hypothesis achieves higher throughput compared to the conventional two-class hypothesis for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), spectrum sensing is critical for guaranteeing that the opportunistic spectrum access by secondary users (SUs) will not interrupt legitimate primary users (PUs). The application of full-duplex radio to spectrum sensing enables SU to carry out sensing and transmission simultaneously, improving both spectrum awareness and CRN throughput. However, the issue of spectrum sensing with full-duplex radios deployed in heterogeneous environments, where SUs may observe different spectrum activities, has not been addressed. In this paper, we give a first look into this problem and develop a light-weight cooperative sensing framework called PaCoSIF, which involves only a pairwise SU transmitter (SU-Tx) and its receiver (SU-Rx) in cooperation. A dedicated control channel is not required for pairwise cooperative sensing with instantaneous feedback (PaCoSIF) because sensing results are collected and fused via the reverse channel provided by full-duplex radios. We present a detailed protocol description to illustrate how PaCoSIF works. However, it is a challenge to optimize the sensing performance of PaCoSIF since the two sensors suffer from spectrum heterogeneity and different kinds of interference. Our goal is to minimize the false alarm rate of PaCoSIF given the bound on the missed detection rate by adaptively adjusting the detection threshold of each sensor. We derive an expression for the optimal threshold using the Lagrange method and propose a fast binary-searching algorithm to solve it numerically. Simulations show that, with perfect signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) information, PaCoSIF could decrease the false alarm rate and boost CRN throughput significantly against conventional cooperative sensing when SUs are deployed in spectrum-heterogeneous environments. Finally, the impact of SINR error upon the performance of PaCoSIF is evaluated via extensive simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the spectrum varying nature of cognitive radio networks, secondary users are required to perform spectrum handoffs when the spectrum is occupied by primary users, which will lead to a handoff delay. In this paper, based on the multi-armed bandit framework of medium access in decentralized cognitive radio networks, we investigate blind spectrum selection problem of secondary users whose sensing ability of cognitive radio is limited and the channel statistics are a priori unknown, taking the handoff delay as a fixed handoff cost into consideration. In this scenario, secondary users have to make the choice of either staying foregoing spectrum with low availability or handing off to another spectrum with higher availability. We model the problem and investigate the performance of three representative policies, i.e., $PRE, SL(K), kth-UCB1. The simulation results show that, despite the inclusion of the fixed handoff cost, these policies achieve the same asymptotic performance as that without handoff cost. Moreover, through comparison of these policies, we found the kth-UCB1 policy has better overall performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative spectrumsensing (CSS)was envisioned to improve the reliability of spectrum sensing in centralized cognitive radio networks (CRNs). However, secondary users (SUs)' changeable environment and ease of compromise make CSS vulnerable to security threats, which further mislead the global decision making and degrade the overall performance. A popular attack in CSS is the called spectrum sensing data falsification (SSDF) attack. In the SSDF attack, malicious cognitive users (MUs) send false sensing results to the fusion center, which significantly degrades detection accuracy. In this paper, a comprehensive reputation-based security mechanism against dynamic SSDF attack for CRNs is proposed. In the mechanism, the reliability of SUs in collaborative sensing is measured with comprehensive reputation values in accordance with the SUs' current and historical sensing behaviors. Meanwhile a punishment strategy is presented to revise the reputation, in which a reward factor and a penalty factor are introduced to encourage SUs to engage in positive and honest sensing activities. The whole mechanism focuses on ensuring the correctness of the global decision continuously. Specifically, the proposed security scheme can effectively alleviate the effect of users' malicious behaviors on network decision making, which contributes greatly to enhancing the fairness and robustness of CRNs. Considering that the attack strategy adopted by MUs has been gradually transforming from simplicity, fixedness and singleness into complexity, dynamic and crypticity, we introduce two dynamic behavior patterns (true to false and then to true (TFT) and false to true and then to false (FTF)) to further validate the effectiveness of our proposed defense mechanism. Abundant simulation results verify the rationality and validity of our proposed mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditional detectors for spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks always become disabled when noise uncertainty is severe. Shannon entropy-based detection methods have aroused widespread attention in recent years due to the characteristics of effective anti-noise uncertainty. However, in existing entropy-based sensing schemes, the uniform quantization method cannot guarantee the maximum entropy distribution when primary users do not exist, and cannot effectively distinguish between two hypotheses, which severely limits the promotion of detection performance. Moreover, the Shannon entropy-based sensing schemes are prone to misconvergence occurring when estimating entropy values, thus causing failure detection, which leads to system detection inefficiency and resource waste. These are the two major serious defects in Shannon entropy-based detectors, which restrict the performance improvement. In this paper, a novel non-uniform quantized exponential entropy-based (NQEE) detector is proposed for local sensing to deal with the problems of maximum entropy distribution and detection failure. To further improve the reliability of the detection, a collaborative spectrum sensing algorithm based on an NQEE detector with multiple fusion rules is presented. Simulation results verify that the detection performance of the improved local entropy-based detector is superior to the existing Shannon entropy-based detectors and is proved to be robust to noise power uncertainty. In addition, the novel collaborative detection algorithm outperforms the traditional collaborative spectrum detection method to a great degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet of Things (IoT) has gained an incredible importance in the communication and networking industry due to its innovative solutions and advantages in diverse domains. The IoT' network is a network of smart physical objects: devices, vehicles, buildings, etc. The IoT has a number of applications ranging from smart home, smart surveillance to smart healthcare systems. Since IoT consists of various heterogeneous devices that exhibit different traffic patterns and expect different quality of service (QoS) in terms of data rate, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel, therefore, in this paper, we formulated an optimization problem to assign channels to heterogeneous IoT devices within a smart building for the provisioning of their desired QoS. To solve this problem, a novel particle swarm optimization-based algorithm is proposed. Then, exhaustive simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the supremacy of our proposed algorithm over the existing ones in terms of throughput, bit error rate and the stability index of the channel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The exact and simple distributions of finite random matrix theory (FRMT) are critically important for cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In this paper, we unify some existing distributions of the FRMT with the proposed coefficient matrices (vectors) and represent the distributions with the coefficient-based formulations. A coefficient reuse mechanism is studied, i.e., the same coefficient matrices (vectors) can be exploited to formulate different distributions. For instance, the same coefficient matrices can be used by the largest eigenvalue (LE) and the scaled largest eigenvalue (SLE); the same coefficient vectors can be used by the smallest eigenvalue (SE) and the Demmel condition number (DCN). A new and simple cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the DCN is also deduced. In particular, the dimension boundary between the infinite random matrix theory (IRMT) and the FRMT is initially defined. The dimension boundary provides a theoretical way to divide random matrices into infinite random matrices and finite random matrices. The FRMT-based spectrum sensing (SS) schemes are studied for CRNs. The SLE-based scheme can be considered as an asymptotically-optimal SS scheme when the dimension K is larger than two. Moreover, the standard condition number (SCN)-based scheme achieves the same sensing performance as the SLE-based scheme for dual covariance matrix K = 2. The simulation results verify that the coefficient-based distributions can fit the empirical results very well, and the FRMT-based schemes outperform the IRMT-based schemes and the conventional SS schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive radio can significantly improve the spectrum efficiency, and spectrum handoff is considered as an important functionality to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of primary users (PUs) and the continuity of data transmission of secondary users (SUs). In this paper, we propose an analytical framework based on a preemptive repeat identical (PRI) M/G/1 queuing network model to characterize spectrum handoff behaviors with general service time distribution of both primary and secondary connections, multiple interruptions and transmission delay resulting from the appearance of primary connections. Then, we derive the close-expression of the extended data delivery and the system sojourn time in both staying and changing scenarios. In addition, based on analysis of spectrum handoff behaviors resulting from multiple interruptions caused by the appearance of the primary connections, we investigate the traffic-adaptive policy, by which the considered SU will optimally adjust its handoff spectrum policy. Moreover, we investigate the admissible region and provide the reference for designing the admission control rule for the arriving secondary connection requests. Finally, simulation results verify that our proposed analytical framework is reasonable and can provide the reference for executing the optimal spectrum handoff strategy and designing the admission control rule for the SU in cognitive radio networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to locate source signal more accurately in authorized frequency bands, a novel primary user localization algorithm based on compressive sensing (PU-CSL) in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) is proposed in this paper. In comparison to existing centroid locating algorithms, PU-CSL shows higher locating accuracy for integrally exploring correlation between source signal and secondary users (SUs). Energy detection is first adopted for collecting the energy fingerprint of source signal at each SU, then degree of correlation between source signal and SUs is reconstructed based on compressive sensing (CS), which determines weights of centroid coordinates. A weighted centroid scheme is finally utilized to estimate source position. Simulation results show that PU-CSL has smaller maximum error of positioning and root-mean-square error. Moreover, the proposed PU-CSL algorithm possess excellent location accuracy and strong anti-noise performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A cognitive radio-based spectrum allocation scheme using an active cooperative-aware mechanism is proposed in this paper. The scheme ensures that the primary user and secondary users cooperate actively for their own benefits. The primary user releases some spectrum resources to secondary users to actively stimulate them to actively join the cooperative transmission of the primary user, and secondary users help the primary user to relay data in return, as well as its self-data transmission at the same time. The Stackelberg game is used to evenly and jointly optimize the utilities of both the primary and secondary users. Simulation results show that the proposed active cooperation-aware mechanism could improve the body sensor network performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti-jamming in cognitive radio networks (CRN) is mainly accomplished using machine learning techniques in the domains of frequency, coding, power and rate. Jamming is a major threat to CRN because it can cause severe performance damage such as network isolation, network application interruption and even physical damage to infrastructure simple radio devices. With the improvement in communication technologies, the capabilities of adversaries are also increased. The intelligent jammer knows the rate at which users transmit data, which is based on the attractiveness factor of each user. The higher the data rate for a secondary user, the more attractive it is to the rate-aware jammer. In this paper, we present a dummy user in the network as a honeypot of the jammer to get the jammer's attention. A new anti-jamming deceiving theoretical method based on rate modifications is introduced to increase the bandwidth efficiency of the entire cognitive radio-based communication system. We employ a defensive anti-jamming deception mechanism of the Pseudo Secondary User (PSU) to as an entice to trap the attacker by providing thus enhanced protection for the rest of the network from the impact of the attacker. Our analytical simulation results show a significant improvement in performance using the proposed solution. The utility of the proposed intelligent anti-jamming algorithm lies in its applications to support the secondary wireless sensor nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of ambient backscatter (AB) communications (ABCs) and RF-powered cognitive radio networks (CRNs) deals with challenges of both energy supply and spectrum shortage, and improves the network performances. With the expansion of wireless networks, many applications raise requirements for both high-throughput and timely data. Driven by these facts, we study the long-term throughput optimization of the secondary network in the AB-assisted overlay CRN (ABO-CRN), ABCs, and CRNs with the age of information (AoI) constraint, which is a novel metric for measuring the freshness of data received by receivers. Due to the dynamic environment, complete knowledge of the environment could not be obtained. Then, the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG), a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) method that addresses decision issues in both continuous and discrete spaces, is deployed to address the throughput optimization. We consider the impacts of time and energy allocation on the reward when the AoI constraint can not be satisfied, and develop the corresponding reward functions. Furthermore, we analyze the impacts of the minimum throughput requirement and maximum allowable AoI on the throughput and AoI of the secondary networks in the ABO-CRN, ABCs, and CRNs. We compare the throughput optimization scheme under the AoI constraint with two baseline schemes (i.e., throughput-optimal (T-O) and AoI-optimal (A-O) baseline schemes), and the simulation results show that the throughput of the ABO-CRN is close to the optimal throughput of the T-O baseline scheme, and the AoI of the ABO-CRN is close to the optimal AoI of the A-O baseline scheme.

Cognitive radio (CR) technology has the potential to detect and share the unutilized spectrum by enabling dynamic spectrum access. To detect the primary users' (PUs) activity, energy detection (ED) is widely exploited due to its applicability when it comes to sensing a large range of PU signals, low computation complexity, and implementation costs. As orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission has been proven to have a high resistance to interference, the ED of OFDM signals has become an important local spectrum-sensing (SS) concept in cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In combination with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmissions, MIMO-OFDM-based transmissions have started to become a widely accepted air interface, which ensures a significant improvement in spectral efficiency. Taking into account the future massive implementation of MIMO-OFDM systems in the fifth and sixth generation of mobile networks, this work introduces a mathematical formulation of expressions that enable the analysis of ED performance based on the square-law combining (SLC) method in MIMO-OFDM systems. The analysis of the ED performance was done through simulations performed using the developed algorithms that enable the performance analysis of the ED process based on the SLC in the MIMO-OFDM systems having a different number of transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx) communication branches. The impact of the distinct factors including the PU Tx power, the false alarm probability, the number of Tx and Rx MIMO branches, the number of samples in the ED process, and the different modulation techniques on the ED performance in environments with different levels of signal-to-noise ratios are presented. A comprehensive analysis of the obtained results indicated how the appropriate selection of the analyzed factors can be used to enhance the ED performance of MIMO-OFDM-based CRNs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, the chaotic compressive sensing paradigm has been widely used in many areas, due to its ability to reduce data acquisition time with high security. For cognitive radio networks (CRNs), this mechanism aims at detecting the spectrum holes based on few measurements taken from the original sparse signal. To ensure a high performance of the acquisition and recovery process, the choice of a suitable sensing matrix and the appropriate recovery algorithm should be done carefully. In this paper, a new chaotic compressive spectrum sensing (CSS) solution is proposed for cooperative CRNs based on the Chebyshev sensing matrix and the Bayesian recovery via Laplace prior. The chaotic sensing matrix is used first to acquire and compress the high-dimensional signal, which can be an interesting topic to be published in symmetry journal, especially in the data-compression subsection. Moreover, this type of matrix provides reliable and secure spectrum detection as opposed to random sensing matrix, since any small change in the initial parameters generates a different sensing matrix. For the recovery process, unlike the convex and greedy algorithms, Bayesian models are fast, require less measurement, and deal with uncertainty. Numerical simulations prove that the proposed combination is highly efficient, since the Bayesian algorithm with the Chebyshev sensing matrix provides superior performances, with compressive measurements. Technically, this number can be reduced to 20% of the length and still provides a substantial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) demand technologies so they can not only fly autonomously, but also communicate with base stations, flight controllers, computers, devices, or even other UAVs. Still, UAVs usually operate within unlicensed spectrum bands, competing against the increasing number of mobile devices and other wireless networks. Combining UAVs with Cognitive Radio (CR) may increase their general communication performance, thus allowing them to execute missions where the conventional UAVs face limitations. CR provides a smart wireless communication which, instead of using a transmission frequency defined in the hardware, uses software transmission. CR smartly uses free transmission channels and/or chooses them according to application's requirements. Moreover, CR is considered a key enabler for deploying technologies that require high connectivity, such as Smart Cities, 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), and the Internet of Flying Things (IoFT). This paper presents an overview on the field of CR for UAV communications and its state-of-the-art, testbed alternatives for real data experiments, as well as specifications to build a simple and low-cost testbed, and indicates key opportunities and future challenges in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs), which allow secondary users (SUs) to dynamically access a network without affecting the primary users (PUs), have been widely regarded as an effective approach to mitigate the shortage of spectrum resources and the inefficiency of spectrum utilization. However, the SUs suffer from frequent spectrum handoffs and transmission limitations. In this paper, considering the quality of service (QoS) requirements of PUs and SUs, we propose a novel dynamic flow-adaptive spectrum leasing with channel aggregation. Specifically, we design an adaptive leasing algorithm, which adaptively adjusts the portion of leased channels based on the number of ongoing and buffered PU flows. Furthermore, in the leased spectrum band, the SU flows with access priority employ dynamic spectrum access of channel aggregation, which enables one flow to occupy multiple channels for transmission in a dynamically changing environment. For performance evaluation, the continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) is developed to model our proposed strategy and conduct theoretical analyses. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed strategy effectively improves the spectrum utilization and network capacity, while significantly reducing the forced termination probability and blocking probability of SU flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the energy-efficient communications and user capacity in the cognitive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) symmetric system of underlay mode. The advantage of the improved energy efficiency provided by the orthogonal slot allocation for time division multiple access (TDMA) has a side effect of restricting the number of users accessing the system. To tackle the above problem, this paper proposes a nonorthogonal time resource allocation method with sparse code multiple access (SCMA), which allows one to convert the orthogonal slot units of TDMA into non-orthogonal shared slot units for multiple secondary users (SUs). The method of adding virtual users is adopted, wherein each SU is treated as multiple SUs who occupy a shared unit, to facilitate the packet access. Finally, the greedy algorithm is applied to optimize the time slot allocation of unoccupied shared slot units. The simulation results show that SCMA-based nonorthogonal slot allocation can reduce not only the energy consumption by nearly 40%, but also the average power interference from SUs to primary users by nearly 2 dB if their number is relatively high. Moreover, in the case of satisfying the rate requirement of the users, the system user capacity increased by more than 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive radio (CR) technology is envisioned to use wireless spectrum opportunistically when the primary user (PU) is not using it. In cognitive radio ad-hoc networks (CRAHNs), the mobile users form a distributed multi-hop network using the unused spectrum. The qualities of the channels are different in different locations. When a user moves from one place to another, it needs to switch the channel to maintain the quality-of-service (QoS) required by different applications. The QoS of a channel depends on the amount of usage. A user can select the channels that meet the QoS requirement during its movement. In this paper, we study the mobility patterns of users, predict their next locations and probabilities to move there based on its history. We extract the mobility patterns from each user's location history and match the recent trajectory with the patterns to find future locations. We construct a spectrum database using Wi-Fi access point location data and the free space path loss formula. We propose a machine learning-based mechanism to predict spectrum status of some missing locations in the spectrum database. We formulate a problem to select the current channel in order to minimize the total number of channel switches during a certain number of next moves of a user. We conduct an extensive simulation combining real and synthetic datasets to support our model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the underlay cognitive radio networks, the radio environment maps (REMs) estimation is the main challenge in sensing the idle wireless spectrum resources. Traditional deep learning-based algorithms estimate the REMs on the basis of the high-quality, large-scale complete training images. However, collecting the complete radio environment images is time-consuming and requires a numerous number of power spectrum sensing nodes. For this reason, we propose a generative adversarial networks-based pixel regression framework (PRF) for underlay cognitive radio networks. The PRF algorithm relaxes the requirement of the complete training images, and estimates the radio environment maps only on the basis of the incomplete REMs images, which are easier to be collected. First, we transform the radio environment maps estimation task into a pixel regression task through the color mapping progress. Then, to extract helpful information from the incomplete training data, we design a feature enhancing module for the PRF algorithm, which intelligently learns and emphasizes the important features from the training images. Finally, we use the trained pixel regression framework to reconstruct the radio environment maps in the target area. The proposed algorithm learns accurate radio environment characteristics from the incomplete training data rather than making direct biased or imprecise radio propagation assumptions as in the traditional methods. Thus, the PRF algorithm has a better REMs reconstruction performance than the traditional methods, as verified by simulations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the growth of the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, a wide range of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will be deployed for various applications. In general, WSNs are constrained by limitations in spectrum and energy resources. In order to circumvent these technical challenges, we propose a novel cooperative phase-steering (CPS) technique with a simple on-off power control for generic spectrum sharing-based WSNs, which consists of a single secondary source (SS) node, multiple secondary relay (SR) nodes, a single secondary destination (SD) node, and multiple primary destination (PD) nodes. In the proposed technique, each SR node that succeeds in packet decoding from the SS and for which its interference power to the PD nodes is lower than a certain threshold is allowed to transmit the signal to the SD node. All SR nodes that are allowed to transmit signals to the SD node adjust the phase of their transmit signal such that the phase of received signals at the SD node from the SR nodes is aligned to a certain angle. Moreover, we mathematically analyze the outage probability of the proposed scheme. Our analytical and simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms the conventional cooperative relaying schemes in terms of outage probability. Through extensive computer simulations, it is shown that the analytical results match well with the simulated outage probability as a lower bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spectrum handoff is one of the key techniques in a cognitive radio system. In order to improve the agility and the reliability of spectrum handoffs as well as the system throughput in hybrid cognitive radio networks (HCRNs) combing interweave mode with underlay mode, a predictive (or proactive) spectrum handoff scheme based on a deep Q-network (DQN) for HCRNs is proposed in this paper. In the proposed spectrum handoff approach, spectrum handoff success rate is introduced into an optimal spectrum resource allocation model to ensure the reliability of spectrum handoff, and the closed-form expression for the spectrum handoff success rate is obtained based on the Poisson distribution. Furthermore, we exploit the transfer learning strategy to further improve the DQN learning process and finally achieve a priority sequence of target available channels for spectrum handoffs, which can maximize the overall HCRNs throughput while satisfying constraints on secondary users' interference with primary user, limits on the spectrum handoff success rate, and the secondary users' performance requirements. Simulation results show that the proposed spectrum handoff scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art spectrum handoff algorithms based on predictive decision in terms of the convergence rate, the handoff success rate and the system throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By harvesting energy from ambient radio frequency (RF) signals, significant progress has been achieved in wireless networks self-maintaining their life cycles. Motivated by this and improved spectrum reuse by combined use of overlay/underlay modes of cognitive radio networks (CRNs), this paper proposes a novel multi-channel (m-channel) allocation performance maximization algorithm for low-power mobiles. CRNs, called secondary transmitters (STs), can harvest energy from RF signals by nearby active primary transmitters (PTs). In the proposed scheme, PTs and STs are distributed as independent homogeneous Poisson point processes and contact their receivers at fixed distances. Each PT contains a guard zone to protect its intended receiver from ST interference, and provides RF energy to STs located in its harvesting zone. Prioritization of STs during opportunistic allocation of channels is critical as properties like energy level and harvesting capability improve channel distribution performance. A novel metric is proposed that prioritizes STs based on initial energy levels, harvesting capability, and number of channels through which they can transmit. For comparison, three algorithms were considered: a greedy mechanism for m-channel allocation of hybrid CRNs without harvesting, the proposed m-channel allocation schemes based on maximum independent sets (MIS), and the proposed metric of hybrid CRNs with harvesting capability. The simulations show that the proposed m-channel allocation method based on MIS outperforms the greedy algorithm. The proposed m-channel allocation using the proposed metric on hybrid CRNs with energy harvesting ability produced the best performance of the three methods, proving the superiority of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) can improve spectrum utilization by allowing secondary users (SUs) to dynamically access channels unoccupied by primary users (PUs). The spectrum access strategy, as a point to enhance user performance, has received much attention. In this paper, we propose a hybrid access mode for network users in multichannel CRNs. For meeting different SU demands, SUs are classified as SU1s and SU2s. We further introduce a channel bonding scheme for high-priority (PU and SU1) user packets to enhance transmission efficiency. At the same time, we propose a hybrid spectrum access strategy for SU2 packets to improve their transmission stability. By establishing a Markov chain model, some important SU2 packets' performance measures are derived. Furthermore, we display the comparison of hybrid, overlay and underlay modes by numerical results to analyze the advantages of different modes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies showed that the performance of the modulation classification (MC) is considerably improved by using multiple sensors deployed in a cooperative manner. Such cooperative MC solutions are based on the centralized fusion of independent features or decisions made at sensors. Essentially, the cooperative MC employs multiple uncorrelated observations of the unknown signal to gather more complete information, compared to the single sensor reception, which is used in the fusion process to refine the MC decision. However, the non-cooperative nature of MC inherently induces large loss in cooperative MC performance due to the unreliable measure of quality for the MC results obtained at individual sensors (which causes the partial information loss while performing centralized fusion). In this paper, the distributed two-stage fusion concept for the cooperative MC using multiple sensors is proposed. It is shown that the proposed distributed fusion, which combines feature (cumulant) fusion and decision fusion, facilitate preservation of information during the fusion process and thus considerably improve the MC performance. The clustered architecture is employed, with the influence of mismatched references restricted to the intra-cluster data fusion in the first stage. The adopted distributed concept represents a flexible and scalable solution that is suitable for implementation of large-scale networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been successfully used for the joint routing and resource management in large-scale cognitive radio networks. However, it needs lots of interactions with the environment through trial and error, which results in large energy consumption and transmission delay. In this paper, an apprenticeship learning scheme is proposed for the energy-efficient cross-layer routing design. Firstly, to guarantee energy efficiency and compress huge action space, a novel concept called dynamic adjustment rating is introduced, which regulates transmit power efficiently with multi-level transition mechanism. On top of this, the Prioritized Memories Deep Q-learning from Demonstrations (PM-DQfD) is presented to speed up the convergence and reduce the memory occupation. Then the PM-DQfD is applied to the cross-layer routing design for power efficiency improvement and routing latency reduction. Simulation results confirm that the proposed method achieves higher energy efficiency, shorter routing latency and larger packet delivery ratio compared to traditional algorithms such as Cognitive Radio Q-routing (CRQ-routing), Prioritized Memories Deep Q-Network (PM-DQN), and Conjecture Based Multi-agent Q-learning Scheme (CBMQ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spectrum sensing is the most important task in cognitive radio (CR). In this paper, a new robust distributed spectrum sensing approach, called diffusion maximum correntropy criterion (DMCC)-based robust spectrum sensing, is proposed for CR in the presence of non-Gaussian noise or impulsive noise. The proposed distributed scheme, which does not need any central processing unit, is characterized by an adaptive diffusion model. The maximum correntropy criterion, which is insensitive to impulsive interference, is introduced to deal with the effect of non-Gaussian noise. Simulation results show that the DMCC-based spectrum sensing algorithm has an excellent robust property with respect to non-Gaussian noise. It is also observed that the new method displays a considerably better detection performance than its predecessor (i.e., diffusion least mean square (DLMS)) in impulsive noise. Moreover, the mean and variance convergence analysis of the proposed algorithm are also carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), spectrum sensing is critical for guaranteeing that the opportunistic spectrum access by secondary users (SUs) will not interrupt legitimate primary users (PUs). The application of full-duplex radio to spectrum sensing enables SU to carry out sensing and transmission simultaneously, improving both spectrum awareness and CRN throughput. However, the issue of spectrum sensing with full-duplex radios deployed in heterogeneous environments, where SUs may observe different spectrum activities, has not been addressed. In this paper, we give a first look into this problem and develop a light-weight cooperative sensing framework called PaCoSIF, which involves only a pairwise SU transmitter (SU-Tx) and its receiver (SU-Rx) in cooperation. A dedicated control channel is not required for pairwise cooperative sensing with instantaneous feedback (PaCoSIF) because sensing results are collected and fused via the reverse channel provided by full-duplex radios. We present a detailed protocol description to illustrate how PaCoSIF works. However, it is a challenge to optimize the sensing performance of PaCoSIF since the two sensors suffer from spectrum heterogeneity and different kinds of interference. Our goal is to minimize the false alarm rate of PaCoSIF given the bound on the missed detection rate by adaptively adjusting the detection threshold of each sensor. We derive an expression for the optimal threshold using the Lagrange method and propose a fast binary-searching algorithm to solve it numerically. Simulations show that, with perfect signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) information, PaCoSIF could decrease the false alarm rate and boost CRN throughput significantly against conventional cooperative sensing when SUs are deployed in spectrum-heterogeneous environments. Finally, the impact of SINR error upon the performance of PaCoSIF is evaluated via extensive simulations.

The exact and simple distributions of finite random matrix theory (FRMT) are critically important for cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In this paper, we unify some existing distributions of the FRMT with the proposed coefficient matrices (vectors) and represent the distributions with the coefficient-based formulations. A coefficient reuse mechanism is studied, i.e., the same coefficient matrices (vectors) can be exploited to formulate different distributions. For instance, the same coefficient matrices can be used by the largest eigenvalue (LE) and the scaled largest eigenvalue (SLE); the same coefficient vectors can be used by the smallest eigenvalue (SE) and the Demmel condition number (DCN). A new and simple cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the DCN is also deduced. In particular, the dimension boundary between the infinite random matrix theory (IRMT) and the FRMT is initially defined. The dimension boundary provides a theoretical way to divide random matrices into infinite random matrices and finite random matrices. The FRMT-based spectrum sensing (SS) schemes are studied for CRNs. The SLE-based scheme can be considered as an asymptotically-optimal SS scheme when the dimension K is larger than two. Moreover, the standard condition number (SCN)-based scheme achieves the same sensing performance as the SLE-based scheme for dual covariance matrix K = 2 . The simulation results verify that the coefficient-based distributions can fit the empirical results very well, and the FRMT-based schemes outperform the IRMT-based schemes and the conventional SS schemes.

Cognitive radio can significantly improve the spectrum efficiency, and spectrum handoff is considered as an important functionality to guarantee the quality of service (QoS) of primary users (PUs) and the continuity of data transmission of secondary users (SUs). In this paper, we propose an analytical framework based on a preemptive repeat identical (PRI) M/G/1 queuing network model to characterize spectrum handoff behaviors with general service time distribution of both primary and secondary connections, multiple interruptions and transmission delay resulting from the appearance of primary connections. Then, we derive the close-expression of the extended data delivery and the system sojourn time in both staying and changing scenarios. In addition, based on analysis of spectrum handoff behaviors resulting from multiple interruptions caused by the appearance of the primary connections, we investigate the traffic-adaptive policy, by which the considered SU will optimally adjust its handoff spectrum policy. Moreover, we investigate the admissible region and provide the reference for designing the admission control rule for the arriving secondary connection requests. Finally, simulation results verify that our proposed analytical framework is reasonable and can provide the reference for executing the optimal spectrum handoff strategy and designing the admission control rule for the SU in cognitive radio networks.