Joint cooperative spectrum sensing and MAC protocol design for multi-channel cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we propose a semi-distributed cooperative spectrum sensing (SDCSS) and channel access framework for multi-channel cognitive radio networks (CRNs). In particular, we consider a SDCSS scheme where secondary users (SUs) perform sensing and exchange sensing outcomes with each other to locate spectrum holes. In addition, we devise the p-persistent CSMA-based cognitive medium access control (MAC) protocol integrating the SDCSS to enable efficient spectrum sharing among SUs. We then perform throughput analysis and develop an algorithm to determine the spectrum sensing and access parameters to maximize the throughput for a given allocation of channel sensing sets. Moreover, we consider the spectrum sensing set optimization problem for SUs to maximize the overall system throughput. We present both exhaustive search and low-complexity greedy algorithms to determine the sensing sets for SUs and analyze their complexity. We also show how our design and analysis can be extended to consider reporting errors. Finally, extensive numerical results are presented to demonstrate the significant performance gain of our optimized design framework with respect to non-optimized designs as well as the impacts of different protocol parameters on the throughput performance.