A Stackelberg Game for Cooperative Cognitive Radio Network with Active SUs

Recently a new class of methods called Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks (CCRNs) has been proposed with the advance of Cooperative Communication (CC) and Cognitive Radio (CR) technologies. In a CCRN, secondary users can operate as cooperative relays for a primary user in order to obtain a temporal right to dynamic spectrum access. Many recent CR studies focus on the spectrum market including pricing and leasing in economic contexts. However, prior research efforts on CCRN models typically assume passive operations of secondary users, which ignores that active secondary users may not cooperate with the primary user due to the existence of spectrum market. Therefore, in this paper, a CCRN model named YACCRN is formulated as a Stackelberg game and analyzed. We show several interesting characteristics of our CCRN model due to the rational choice of secondary users between cooperation and band leasing. Our analysis shows that the consideration of CC in the future spectrum market design is inevitable.