This paper addresses the coexistence issue of distributed heterogeneous networks where the network nodes are cognitive radio terminals. These nodes, operating as secondary users (SUs), might interfere with primary users (PUs) who are licensed to use a given frequency band. Further, due to the lack of coordination and the dissimilarity of the radio access technologies (RATs) among these wireless nodes, they might interfere with each other. To solve this coexistence problem, we propose an architecture that enables coordination among the distributed nodes. The architecture provides coexistence solutions and sends reconfiguration commands to SU networks. As an example, time sharing is considered as a solution. Further, the time slot allocation ratios and transmit powers are parameters encapsulated in the reconfiguration commands. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of the coexistence between PUs and SUs, as well as the coexistence among SUs. The former addresses the interference from SUs to PUs, whereas the latter addresses the sharing of an identified spectrum opportunity among heterogeneous SU networks for achieving an efficient spectrum usage. In this study, we first introduce a new parameter named as quality of coexistence (QoC), which is defined as the ratio between the quality of SU transmissions and the negative interference to PUs. In this study we assume that the SUs have multiple antennas and employ fixed transmit power control (fixed-TPC). By using the approximation to the distribution of a weighted sum of chi-square random variables (RVs), we develop an analytical model for the time slot allocation among SU networks. Using this analytical model, we obtain the optimal time slot allocation ratios as well as transmit powers of the SU networks by maximizing the QoC. This leads to an efficient spectrum usage among SUs and a minimized negative influence to the PUs. Results show that in a particular scenario the QoC can be increased by 30%.

In a periodic spectrum sensing framework where each frame consists of a sensing block and a data transmitting block, increasing sensing duration decreases the probabilities of both missed opportunity and interference with primary users, but increasing sensing duration also decreases the energy efficiency and the transmitting efficiency of the cognitive network. Therefore, the sensing duration to use is a trade-off between sensing performance and system efficiencies. The relationships between sensing duration and state transition probability are analyzed firstly, when the licensed channel stays in the idle and busy states respectively. Then a state transition probability based sensing duration optimization algorithm is proposed, which can dynamically optimize the sensing duration of each frame in the current idle/busy state by predicting each frame's state transition probability at the beginning of the current state. Analysis and simulation results reveal that the time-varying optimal sensing duration increases as the state transition probability increases and compared to the existing method, the proposed algorithm can use as little sensing duration in each frame as possible to satisfy the sensing performance constraints so as to maximize the energy and transmitting efficiencies of the cognitive networks.

Selections of radio access networks by terminals are currently not coordinated and utilizations of the radio resources are not balanced. As a result, radio resources on some radio systems are occupied even though others can afford. In this paper, in order to provide a framework to resolve this issue, Cognitive Wireless Router (CWR) system is proposed for distributed management and independent reconfiguration of heterogeneous wireless networks. The proposed system selects appropriate operational frequency bands and radio systems to connect to the Internet in corporation between the CWRs and a server and therefore can provide optimized wireless Internet access easily even in environments without wired networks. The developed prototype system reconfigures the radio devices to connect to the Internet in 27 seconds at most. It is revealed that this reconfiguration time can be shortened to less than 100 ms by elaborating its procedure. It is also clarified that network data speed required at the server to deal with 10,000 CWRs is only 4.1 Mbps.

This paper investigates primary signal detection by using a quiet period (QP) in cognitive wireless communications. In particular, we provide an analytical model for studying the impact of QPs on the system performance. Our analysis shows that two successive QPs have a significant impact on system performance. Moreover, the analytical results obtained reveal an optimum period of two successive QPs that maximize system performance.

A multiband system can flexibly create spectral holes to avoid interference between different systems. When two systems within the same frequency band coexist, the multiband system must immediately detect the signals from all users to remove unwanted interference. The complication of creating spectral holes is to obtain an occupied frequency band and an angle-of-arrival of interfering system. These parameters must be measured at the receiver of multiband system and then fed back to the transmitter. This paper presents a channel estimator with an interference detector that is developed to implement and test it's functionality in a multiband system. The proposed estimator can precisely detect the parameters before demodulation, and quickly feed back the interfering system parameters to transmitter. The effective design and the detection error rate were evaluated via verification tests in an anechoic chamber and computer simulations. The results of the proposed technique show an ability of interference detection as well as channel estimation.

Spectrum sensing is a fundamental function for cognitive radio network to protect transmission of primary system. Cooperative spectrum sensing, which can help increasing sensing performance, is regarded as one of the most promising methods in realizing a reliable cognitive network. In such cooperation system, however the communication resources such as sensing time delay, control channel bandwidth and consumption energy for reporting the cognitive radio node's sensing results to the fusion center may become extremely huge when the number of cognitive users is large. In this paper, we propose an ordered sequential cooperative spectrum sensing scheme in which the local sensing data will be sent according to its reliability order to the fusion center. In proposed scheme, the sequential fusion process is sequentially conducted based on Dempster Shafer theory of evidence's combination of the reported sensing results. Above all, the proposed scheme is highly feasible due to the proposed two ordered sequential reporting methods. From simulation results, it is shown that the proposed technique not only keeps the same sensing performance of non-sequential fusion scheme but also extremely reduces the reporting resource requirements.

We present an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based multichannel slotted ALOHA for cognitive radio networks (OMSA-CR). The performance of an infinite population based OMSA-CR system is analyzed in terms of channel capacity, throughput, delay, and packet capture effect. We investigate the channel capacity for OMSA-CR with perfect or imperfect spectrum sensing. We introduce the proposed CR MAC based on two channel selection schemes: non-agile channel selection (NCS) and agile channel selection (ACS). Comparing them, we show the tradeoff between complexity and system performance. We verify the proposed CR system model using numerical analysis. In particular, using simulation with a finite populated linear feedback model, we observe the OMSA-CR MAC tradeoff between throughput and minimum delay whose results matched those of the analytical framework. Numerical results for the proposed system throughput are also compared to conventional MACs, including pure ALOHA based CR MAC.

Time is considered as an important factor in modeling and operation of dynamic systems. However, few studies have considered time factor in modeling and inference of fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs), besides, no studies have dealt with time delay in learning of FCMs. Therefore, we propose a learning rule for temporal FCMs involving post- and pre-delay time by extending Oja's learning rule. We show the effectiveness of the proposed rule through simulations which solve a time-delayed chemical plant control problem.

We propose an opportunistic spectrum access scheme for unslotted secondary users exploiting spectrum opportunities in unslotted primary networks. An analytical model is developed to investigate the performance of the proposed scheme, and numerical results are presented to evaluate the performance in unslotted primary networks.

In the symbiotic cognitive radio (CR) networks, the CR users (CUs) may assist the primary transmission in a cooperation time, and obtain an incentive time for their own data transmission. In this letter, we study the throughput maximization problem in the symbiotic CR networks. Under the symbiosis and transmit power constraints, we aim to find the optimal cooperation time to assist the primary transmission and power allocations among the CUs. Given the cooperation time, the optimal power allocations can be solved by multi-level water-filling (MWF) with individual volume limits. A theoretical analysis is presented on the cooperation time and a modified bisection algorithm with low complexity is proposed to find the sub-optimal cooperation time. Simulation results show that the spectrum usage efficiency can be significantly improved as the number of CUs increases.

Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) are used to support decision-making, and the decision processes are performed by inference of FCMs. The inference greatly depends on activation functions such as sigmoid function, hyperbolic tangent function, step function, and threshold linear function. However, the sigmoid functions widely used for decision-making processes have been designed by experts. Therefore, we propose a method for designing sigmoid functions through Lyapunov stability analysis. We show the usefulness of the proposed method through the experimental results in inference of FCMs using the designed sigmoid functions.

In a conventional downlink OFDMA system, an underlay secondary network is co-located to formulate a new implementation of OFDMA-based cognitive radio (OCR), where spectrum sharing is enabled between primary users and secondary users. With the introduced concept of accessible interference temperature, this new model can be easily implemented and may contribute to the future realization of OCR systems.

Cognitive radio has emerged as an efficient approach to reusing the licensed spectrums. How to appropriately set parameters of secondary user (SU) plays a rather important role in constructing cognitive radio networks. In this letter, we have analyzed the theoretical value of SUs' density, which provides a standard for controlling the number of SUs around one primary receiver, in order to guarantee that primary communication links do not experience excessive interference. The simulation result of secondary density well matches with the theoretical result derived from our analysis. Additionally, the achievable rate of secondary user under density control is also analyzed and simulated.

Cooperation is an attractive approach to improving the spectrum sensing performance of cognitive systems experiencing deep shadowing and fading. In this letter, an efficient weight-based cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has better accuracy than "AND," "OR," and "half-voting" combination schemes and has similar spectrum sensing accuracy but with lower computational and communication complexity in comparison to the "optimal data fusion" rule.

Dynamic spectrum access has become a focal issue recently, in which identifying the available spectrum plays a rather important role. Lots of work has been done concerning secondary user (SU) synchronously accessing primary user's (PU's) network. However, on one hand, SU may have no idea about PU's communication protocols; on the other, it is possible that communications among PU are not based on synchronous scheme at all. In order to address such problems, this paper advances a strategy for SU to search available spectrums with asynchronous MAC-layer sensing. With this method, SUs need not know the communication mechanisms in PU's network when dynamically accessing. We will focus on four aspects: 1) strategy for searching available channels; 2) vacating strategy when PUs come back; 3) estimation of channel parameters; 4) impact of SUs' interference on PU's data rate. The simulations show that our search strategy not only can achieve nearly 50% less interference probability than equal allocation of total search time, but also well adapts to time-varying channels. Moreover, access by our strategies can attain 150% more access time than random access. The moment matching estimator shows good performance in estimating and tracing time-varying channels.

Transmission power control (TPC) is an important aspects of underlay transmission in the cognitive radio (CR) networks since it is able to avoid the extra interference from secondary transmission which can let the CR user coexist with the primary systems around. However, due to the different coverage of the primary signal and CR signal, combined with the complexity of the wireless communication, the scanning CR transmitter may not detect the existence of the primary systems. It will cause inaccurate TPC which will severely disrupt the primary service. In this letter, we propose a dynamic neighbor coordinated power control scheme that can avoid the misdetection of the primary signal and provide relatively accurate TPC related distance estimation. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme greatly reduces interference to the primary systems while enhancing overall CR network throughput.

In this letter, we propose a Throughput-aimed MAC Protocol with Quality of Service (QoS) provision (T-MAC) for cognitive Ad Hoc networks. This protocol operates based on the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slot assignments and the power control mechanism, which can improve the QoS provision and network throughput. Our simulation results show that the T-MAC protocol can efficiently increase the network throughput and reduce the access delay.

Free probability theory, which has become a main branch of random matrix theory, is a valuable tool for describing the asymptotic behavior of multiple systems, especially for large matrices. In this paper, using asymptotic free probability theory, a new cooperative scheme for spectrum sensing is proposed, which shows how the asymptotic free behavior of random matrices and the property of Wishart distribution can be used to assist spectrum sensing for cognitive radio. Simulations over Rayleigh fading and AWGN channels demonstrate the proposed scheme has better detection performance than the energy detection techniques and the Maximum-minimum eigenvalue (MME) scheme even for the case of a small sample of observations.

This paper investigates dynamic spectrum access based on MAC-Layer spectrum sensing and prior channel pre-allocation strategy. We first combine channel utilization with channel state transition probability from idle to busy to reflect the channel opportunity quality in cognitive radio systems. Then a MAC-Layer spectrum sensing algorithm based on Channel Opportunity Quality Descending Order (COQDO) is proposed for the single secondary user scenario, so that the single secondary user can be provided with dynamic spectrum access. For the multi-secondary users scenario, in order to solve the channel collision problem among secondary users in dynamic spectrum access, a joint MAC-Layer spectrum sensing and prior channel pre-allocation algorithm is proposed and analyzed. Channel collision problem occurs when more than one secondary users detect the channel as idle and access it at the same time. Furthermore, the prior channel pre-allocation is optimized by using the conventional Color Sensitive Graph Coloring (CSGC) algorithm. Extensive simulation results are presented to compare our proposed algorithms with existing algorithms in terms of idle channel search delay and accumulated channel handoff delay.

This position paper outlines the author's view on architectural directions and key technology enablers for the future mobile Internet. It is pointed out that mobile and wireless services will dominate Internet usage in the near future, and it is therefore important to design next-generation network protocols with features suitable for efficiently serving emerging wireless scenarios and applications. Several key requirements for mobile/wireless scenarios are identified - these include new capabilities such as dynamic spectrum coordination, cross-layer support, disconnection tolerant routing, content addressing, and location awareness. Specific examples of enabling technologies which address some of these requirements are given from ongoing research projects at WINLAB. Topics covered briefly include wireless network virtualization, the cache-and-forward (CNF) protocol, geographic (GEO) protocol stack, cognitive radio protocols, and open networking testbeds.