Performance analysis of a wireless network with opportunistic spectrum sharing

We analyze the performance of a wireless system that allows opportunistic spectrum sharing. The system consists of a set of primary users sharing a set of channels over a coverage area. The resources allocated to the primary users are shared opportunistically with a set of secondary users. The secondary users are capable of detecting channels that are unused by the primary users and then making use of the idle channels. If no channel is available for a secondary call, the call waits in a buffer until either a channel becomes available or a maximum waiting time is reached. We compute the blocking probabilities, mean reconnection probability, channel utilization, and total carried traffic in the system. Our results suggest that opportunistic spectrum sharing can significantly improve the efficiency of a wireless system, without negatively impacting the performance seen by the primary users.