Opportunistic spectrum access for TDMA-based cognitive radio networks

In this paper, opportunistic spectrum access is proposed for TDMA-based cognitive radio networks. In TDMA-based networks, the time is divided into slots with fixed length one by one. If a primary user (PU) needs to transmit data, one or several slots will be used. Otherwise, the slots are idle and can be utilized by secondary users (SUs). When SUs want to use the licensed channel, they should sense the channel at the beginning period of each slot. Then SUs exchange their sensing results and make the same decision about the channel state (idle or used by PUs), which could reduce the probability of false sensing. The aforementioned duration is called spectrum sensing phase. When SUs decide there is an idle channel, they contend to use the channel at the rest time of the slot. The duration is called access phase. In this period, SUs contend the channel with backoff counters. When the remaining time is less than one data transmission duration, SUs cannot transmit data packets. Therefore, the remaining time is wasted. To solve this problem, SUs transmit control packets with small length in the remaining time instead. The SU who exchange control packets successfully reserves the channel and sends a data packet prior to other SUs in access phase of the next idle slot. Obviously, this reserved transmission is without collision. The independent spectrum sensing, channel state decision and control packets reservation influence the performance of SUs. The proposed scheme is formulated with all above factors. Simulations which consist with the numerical results show the proposed access scheme achieve higher throughput than the existed scheme without channel reservation.