Spectrum Utilization Maximization in Energy Limited Cooperative Cognitive Radio Networks

In cooperative cognitive radio networks (CCRNs), through cooperating with primary transmissions, secondary users (SUs) could access the spectrum resource when primary users (PUs) are transmitting. The existing schemes in CCRNs allocate the spectrum resource only to the cooperative relay SU. However, this may lead to the waste of spectrum resource, especially when the relay SU has light traffic load or poor channel condition. To better utilize the spectrum among all SUs in a secondary network, we design a spectrum resource utilization maximization scheme with joint consideration of relay selection and spectrum scheduling problems. With the goal to maximize the throughput of the secondary network, our scheme allocates spectrum among all SUs according to the diversity of secondary traffic load and the channel conditions. Besides, considering that the SUs are always energy limited, we also formulate the energy constraint for each SU to avoid the energy consumption exceeding the total available energy. Moreover, we study the resource allocation problem from long-term view under dynamic network setting, and design an online algorithm to solve it. Through extensive simulations, we show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of secondary network throughput.