The Impact of Spectrum Sensing Frequency and Packet-Loading Scheme on Multimedia Transmission Over Cognitive Radio Networks

Recently, multimedia transmission over cognitive radio networks (CRNs) becomes an important topic due to the CR's capability of using unoccupied spectrum for data transmission. Conventional work has focused on typical quality-of-service (QoS) factors such as radio link reliability, maximum tolerable communication delay, and spectral efficiency. However, there is no work considering the impact of CR spectrum sensing frequency and packet-loading scheme on multimedia QoS. Here the spectrum sensing frequency means how frequently a CR user detects the free spectrum. Continuous, frequent spectrum sensing could increase the medium access control (MAC) layer processing overhead and delay, and cause some multimedia packets to miss the receiving deadline, and thus decrease the multimedia quality at the receiver side. In this research, we will derive the math model between the spectrum sensing frequency and the number of remaining packets that need to be sent, as well as the relationship between spectrum sensing frequency and the new channel availability time during which the CRN user is allowed to use a new channel (after the current channel is re-occupied by primary users) to continue packet transmission. A smaller number of remaining packets and a larger value of new channel availability time will help to transmit multimedia packets within a delay deadline. Based on the above relationship model, we select appropriate spectrum sensing frequency under single-channel case, and study the trade-offs among the number of selected channels, optimal spectrum sensing frequency, and packet-loading scheme under multi-channel case. The optimal spectrum sensing frequency and packet-loading solutions for multi-channel case are obtained by using the combination of Hughes-Hartogs and discrete particle swarm optimization (DPSO) algorithms. Our experiments of JPEG2000 packet-stream and H.264 video packet-stream transmission over CRN demonstrate the validity of our spectrum sensing frequency selection and packet-loading scheme.