Capacity Upper Bound of Channel Assembling in Cognitive Radio Networks with Quasistationary Primary User Activities

In cognitive radio networks (CRNs) with multiple channels, various channel-assembling (ChA) strategies may be applied to secondary users (SUs), resulting in different achieved capacity. However, there is no previous work on determining the capacity upper bound (UB) of ChA for SUs under given system configurations. In this paper, we derive the maximum capacity for CRNs with ChA through Markov chain modeling, considering that primary user (PU) activities are relatively static, compared with SU services. We first deduce a closed-form expression for the maximum capacity in a dynamic ChA strategy and then demonstrate that no other ChA strategy can provide higher capacity than that achieved by this dynamic strategy. © 2012 IEEE.The work of L. Jiao and F. Y. Li was supported in part by the Research Council of Norway through the ECO-boat MOL project under Grant 210426. The work of E. Song was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 60901037 and in part by the Foundation for Basic Research of Sichuan University for Distinguished Young Scholars under Grant 0082604132188. The work of V. Pla was supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion through Project TIN2010-21378-C02-02. The review of this paper was coordinated by Prof. B. Hamdaoui.Jiao, L.; Song, E.; Pla, V.; Li, FY. (2013). Capacity Upper Bound of Channel Assembling in Cognitive Radio Networks with Quasistationary Primary User Activities. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. 62(4):1849-1855. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2012.2236115S1849185562

Medium access in cognitive radio networks: From single hop to multiple hops

If channel assembling is enabled, this technique can be utilized for potential performance improvement in CRNs. Two use cases are envisaged for channel assembling. In the first use case, the system can accommodate parallel SU services in multiple channels, while in the second use case, the system allows only one SU service at a time. In the use case where parallel SU services are allowed, various channel assembling strategies are proposed and modeled in order to investigate their performance and to acquire better comprehension of the behavior of CRNs with channel assembling. Moreover, the capacity upper bound for CRNs with channel assembling in the quasistationary regime is derived. In the use case when there is only one SU service that can utilize the vacant channels at a time, we formulate channel access into two optimization problems on power allocation in multi-channel CRNs and propose various algorithms to solve these problems

Channel assembling and resource allocation in multichannel spectrum sharing wireless networks

Submitted in fulfilment of the academic requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Engineering, in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2017The continuous evolution of wireless communications technologies has increasingly imposed a burden on the use of radio spectrum. Due to the proliferation of new wireless networks applications and services, the radio spectrum is getting saturated and becoming a limited resource. To a large extent, spectrum scarcity may be a result of deficient spectrum allocation and management policies, rather than of the physical shortage of radio frequencies. The conventional static spectrum allocation has been found to be ineffective, leading to overcrowding and inefficient use. Cognitive radio (CR) has therefore emerged as an enabling technology that facilitates dynamic spectrum access (DSA), with a great potential to address the issue of spectrum scarcity and inefficient use. However, provisioning of reliable and robust communication with seamless operation in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) is a challenging task. The underlying challenges include development of non-intrusive dynamic resource allocation (DRA) and optimization techniques. The main focus of this thesis is development of adaptive channel assembling (ChA) and DRA schemes, with the aim to maximize performance of secondary user (SU) nodes in CRNs, without degrading performance of primary user (PU) nodes in a primary network (PN). The key objectives are therefore four-fold. Firstly, to optimize ChA and DRA schemes in overlay CRNs. Secondly, to develop analytical models for quantifying performance of ChA schemes over fading channels in overlay CRNs. Thirdly, to extend the overlay ChA schemes into hybrid overlay and underlay architectures, subject to power control and interference mitigation; and finally, to extend the adaptive ChA and DRA schemes for multiuser multichannel access CRNs. Performance analysis and evaluation of the developed ChA and DRA is presented, mainly through extensive simulations and analytical models. Further, the cross validation has been performed between simulations and analytical results to confirm the accuracy and preciseness of the novel analytical models developed in this thesis. In general, the presented results demonstrate improved performance of SU nodes in terms of capacity, collision probability, outage probability and forced termination probability when employing the adaptive ChA and DRA in CRNs.CK201

On the Performance of Channel Assembling and Fragmentation in Cognitive Radio Networks

[EN] Flexible channel allocation may be applied to multi-channel cognitive radio networks (CRNs) through either channel assembling (CA) or channel fragmentation (CF). While CA allows one secondary user (SU) occupy multiple channels when primary users (PUs) are absent, CF provides finer granularity for channel occupancy by allocating a portion of one channel to an SU flow. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CF together with CA for SU flows by proposing a channel access strategy which activates both CF and CA and correspondingly evaluating its performance. In addition, we also consider a novel scenario where CA is enabled for PU flows. The performance evaluation is conducted based on continuous time Markov chain (CTMC) modeling and simulations. Through mathematical analyses and simulation results, we demonstrate that higher system capacity can be achieved indeed by jointly employing both CA and CF, in comparison with the CA-only strategies. However, this benefit is obtained only under certain conditions which are pointed out in this paper. Furthermore, the theoretical capacity upper bound for SU flows with both CF and CA enabled is derived when PU activities are relatively static compared with SU flows.This work was supported by the EU Seventh Framework Programme FP7-PEOPLE-IRSES under Grant agreement 247083, project acronym S2EuNet. The work of L. Jiao was supported by the Research Council of Norway through the ECO-boat MOL project under Grant 210426. The work of V. Pla was supported in part by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under Grant TIN2010-21378-C02-02. The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was H. Wymeersch.Jiao, L.; Balapuwaduge, IAM.; Li, FY.; Pla, V. (2014). On the Performance of Channel Assembling and Fragmentation in Cognitive Radio Networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. 13(10):5661-5675. https://doi.org/10.1109/TWC.2014.2322057S56615675131

Performance analysis of wireless networks based on time-scale separation: A new iterative method

The complexity of modern communication networks makes the solution of the Markov chains that model their traffic dynamics, and therefore, the determination of their performance parameters, computationally costly. However, a common characteristic of these networks is that they manage multiple types of traffic flows operating at different time-scales. This time-scale separation can be exploited to substantially reduce the computational cost. Following this approach, we propose a novel solution method named Absorbing Markov Chains Approximation (AMCA) based on the transient regime analysis. Briefly, we model the time the system spends in a series of subsets of states by a phase-type distribution and, for each of them, determine the probabilities of finding the system in each state of this subset until absorption. We compare the AMCA performance to that obtained by classical methods and by a recently proposed approach that aims at generalizing the conventional quasi-stationary approximation. We find that AMCA has a more predictable behavior, is applicable to a wider range of time-scale separations, and achieves higher accuracy for a given computational cost.This research has been supported in part by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain under Grants TIN2013-47272-C2-1-R and TEC2015-71932-REDT. The research of L. Tello-Oquendo was supported in part by Programa de Ayudas de Investigacion y Desarrollo (PAID) of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.Tello Oquendo, LP.; Pla, V.; Martínez Bauset, J.; Casares Giner, V. (2016). Performance analysis of wireless networks based on time-scale separation: A new iterative method. Computer Communications. 86:40-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2016.04.004S40488

Channel assembling policies for heterogeneous fifth generation (5G) cognitive radio networks.

Doctor of Philosophy in Electronic Engineering. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2016.Abstract available in PDF file

Statistical spectrum occupancy prediction for dynamic spectrum access: a classification

Spectrum scarcity due to inefficient utilisation has ignited a plethora of dynamic spectrum access solutions to accommodate the expanding demand for future wireless networks. Dynamic spectrum access systems allow secondary users to utilise spectrum bands owned by primary users if the resulting interference is kept below a pre-designated threshold. Primary and secondary user spectrum occupancy patterns determine if minimum interference and seamless communications can be guaranteed. Thus, spectrum occupancy prediction is a key component of an optimised dynamic spectrum access system. Spectrum occupancy prediction recently received significant attention in the wireless communications literature. Nevertheless, a single consolidated literature source on statistical spectrum occupancy prediction is not yet available in the open literature. Our main contribution in this paper is to provide a statistical prediction classification framework to categorise and assess current spectrum occupancy models. An overview of statistical sequential prediction is presented first. This statistical background is used to analyse current techniques for spectrum occupancy prediction. This review also extends spectrum occupancy prediction to include cooperative prediction. Finally, theoretical and implementation challenges are discussed

Cognitive radio adaptive rendezvous protocols to establish network services for a disaster response

Disasters are catastrophic events that cause great damage or loss of life. In disasters, communication services might be disrupted due to damage to the existing network infrastructure. Temporary systems are required for victims and first responders, but installing them requires information about the radio environment and available spectrum. A cognitive radio (CR) can be used to provide a flexible and rapidly deployable temporary system due to its sensing, learning and decision-making capabilities. This thesis initially examines the potential of CR technology for disaster response networks (DRN) and shows that they are ideally suited to fulfill the requirements of a DRN. A software defined radio based prototype for multiple base transceiver stations based cellular network is proposed and developed. It is demonstrated that system can support a large number of simultaneous calls with sufficient call quality, but only when the background interference is low. It is concluded that to provide call quality with acceptable latency and packet losses, the spectrum should be used dynamically for backhaul connectivity. The deployment challenges for such a system in a disaster include the discovery of the available spectrum, existing networks, and neighbours. Furthermore, to set up a network and to establish network services, initially CR nodes are required to establish a rendezvous. However, this can be challenging due to unknown spectrum information, primary radio (PR) activity, nodes, and topology. The existing rendezvous strategies do not fulfill the DRN requirements and their time to rendezvous (TTR) is long. Therefore, we propose an extended modular clock algorithm (EMCA) which is a multiuser blind rendezvous protocol, considers the DRN requirements and has short TTR. For unknown nodes and topologies, a general framework for self-organizing multihop cooperative fully blind rendezvous protocol is also proposed, which works in different phases, can terminate when sufficient nodes are discovered, and is capable of disseminating the information of nodes which enter or leave a network. A synchronization mechanism is presented for periodic update of rendezvous information. An information exchange mechanism is also proposed which expedites the rendezvous process. In both single and multihop networks, EMCA provides up to 80% improvement in terms of TTR over the existing blind rendezvous strategies while considering the PR activity. A simple Random strategy, while being poorer than EMCA, is also shown to outperform existing strategies on average. To achieve adaptability in the presence of unknown PR activity, different CR operating policies are proposed which avoid the channels detected with PR activity to reduce the harmful interference, provide free channels to reduce the TTR, and can work with any rendezvous strategy. These policies are evaluated over different PR activities and shown to reduce the TTR and harmful interference significantly over the basic Listen before Talk approach. A proactive policy, which prefers to return to channels with recent lower PR activity, is shown to be best, and to improve the performance of all studied rendezvous strategies

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 400)

This bibliography lists 397 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during April 1995. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and physiology, life support systems and man/system technology, protective clothing, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, planetary biology, and flight crew behavior and performance