Traffic Based Optimization of Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks

We propose a more practical spectrum sensing optimization problem in cognitive radio networks (CRN), by considering the data traffic of second user (SU). Compared with most existing work, we do not assume that SU always has packets to transmit; instead, we use the actual data transmitted per second rather than the channel capacity as the achievable throughput, to reformulate the Sensing-Throughput Tradeoff problem. We mathematically analyze the problem of optimal sensing time to maximize the achievable throughput, based on the data traffic of SU. Our model is more general because the traditional Sensing-Throughput Tradeoff model can be seen as a special case of our model. We also prove that the throughput is a concave function of sensing time and there is only one optimal sensing time value which is determined by the data traffic. Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms existing methods.