Location based throughput gain in cognitive radio

Abstract

Selection of appropriate detection threshold (λ) is a very critical task in energy detection scheme based cognitive radio (CR) system. λ is mainly selected by using two principles called as constant detection rate (CDR) in which λ is calculated by taking fixed value of probability of detection (Pd) and constant false alarm rate (CFAR) in which λ is calculated by taking fixed value of probability of false alarm Pfa. The CDR principle is mostly adopted to sufficiently protect the primary users (PUs), but it lags in exploiting the best spectrum utilization opportunities mainly when CR user is located far away where chances of interfering a PU communication are least. This overprotective nature of CR in CDR principle leads to a decrease in its achievable throughput. To overcome it, this article proposes an approach in which the location information of PU is efficiently used to access the spectrum using “opportunistic spectrum access scheme under the CDR principle” and the “scheme of spectrum sharing”. Under the proposed approach, the CR achieves a significant gain in its throughput compared to the approach in which the CDR and CFAR principles are used blindly.