Integrating Two Feedback Queuing Discipline into Cognitive Radio Channel Aggregation

Queuing regime is one outstanding approach inimproving channel aggregation. If well designed and incorporatedwith carefully selected parameters, it enhances the smoothrollout of fifth/next generation wireless networks. While channelaggregation is the merging of scattered TV white space (spectrumholes) into one usable chunk for secondary users (SU). Thequeuing regime ensures that these unlicensed users (SUs) traffic/services are not interrupted permanently (blocked/dropped orforced to terminate) in the event of the licensed users (primaryuser) arrival. However, SUs are not identical in terms of trafficclass and bandwidth consumption hence, they are classified asreal time and non-real time SU respectively. Several of thesestrategies have been studied considering queuing regime with asingle feedback queuing discipline. In furtherance to previousproposed work with single feedback queuing regime, this paperproposes, develops and compares channel aggregation policieswith two feedback queuing regimes for the different classes ofSUs. The investigation aims at identifying the impacts of the twofeedbackqueuing regime on the performance of the secondarynetwork such that any SU that has not completed its ongoingservice are queued in their respective buffers. The performance isevaluated through a simulation framework. The results validatethat with a well-designed queuing regime, capacity, access andother indices are improved with significant decrease in blockingand forced termination probabilities respectively

Cognitive radio networks : quality of service considerations and enhancements

The explosive growth of wireless and mobile networks, such as the Internet of Things and 5G, has led to a massive number of devices that primarily use wireless channels within a limited range of the radio frequency spectrum (RFS). The use of RFS is heavily regulated, both nationally and internationally, and is divided into licensed and unlicensed bands. While many of the licensed wireless bands are underutilised, useable unlicensed bands are usually overcrowded, making the efficient use of RFS one of the critical challenges faced by future wireless communication technologies. The cognitive radio (CR) concept is proposed as a promising solution for the underutilisation of useful RFS bands. Fundamentally, CR technology is based on determining the unoccupied licensed RFS bands, called spectrum white spaces or holes, and accessing them to achieve better RFS utilisation and transmission propagation. The holes are the frequencies unused by the licensed user, or primary user (PU). Based on spectrum sensing, a CR node, or secondary user (SU), senses the surrounding spectrum periodically to detect any potential PU transmission in the current channel and to identify the available spectrum holes. Under current RFS regulations, SUs may use spectrum holes as long as their transmissions do not interfere with those of the PU. However, effective spectrum sensing can introduce overheads to a CR node operation. Such overheads affect the quality of service (QoS) of the running applications. Reducing the sensing impact on the QoS is one of the key challenges to adopting CR technology, and more studies of QoS issues related to implementing CR features are needed. This thesis aims to address these QoS issues in CR while considered the enhancement of RFS utilisation. This study concentrates on the spectrum sensing function, among other CR functions, because of its major impact on QoS and spectrum utilisation. Several spectrum sensing methods are reviewed to identify potential research gaps in analysing and addressing related QoS implications. It has been found that none of the well-known sensing techniques is suitable for all the diverse QoS requirements and RFS conditions: in fact, higher accuracy sensing methods cause a significant QoS degradation, as illustrated by several simulations in this work. For instance, QoS degradation caused by high-accuracy sensing has not yet been addressed in the IEEE 802.11e QoS mechanism used in the proposed CR standard, IEEE 802.11af (or White-Fi). This study finds that most of the strategies proposed to conduct sensing are based on a fixed sensing method that is not adaptable to the changeable nature of QoS requirements. In contrast, this work confirms the necessity of using various sensing techniques and parameters during a CR node operation for better performance

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

Optimization of the interoperability and dynamic spectrum management in mobile communications systems beyond 3G

The future wireless ecosystem will heterogeneously integrate a number of overlapped Radio Access Technologies (RATs) through a common platform. A major challenge arising from the heterogeneous network is the Radio Resource Management (RRM) strategy. A Common RRM (CRRM) module is needed in order to provide a step toward network convergence. This work aims at implementing HSDPA and IEEE 802.11e CRRM evaluation tools. Innovative enhancements to IEEE 802.11e have been pursued on the application of cross-layer signaling to improve Quality of Service (QoS) delivery, and provide more efficient usage of radio resources by adapting such parameters as arbitrary interframe spacing, a differentiated backoff procedure and transmission opportunities, as well as acknowledgment policies (where the most advised block size was found to be 12). Besides, the proposed cross-layer algorithm dynamically changes the size of the Arbitration Interframe Space (AIFS) and the Contention Window (CW) duration according to a periodically obtained fairness measure based on the Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and transmission time, a delay constraint and the collision rate of a given machine. The throughput was increased in 2 Mb/s for all the values of the load that have been tested whilst satisfying more users than with the original standard. For the ad hoc mode an analytical model was proposed that allows for investigating collision free communications in a distributed environment. The addition of extra frequency spectrum bands and an integrated CRRM that enables spectrum aggregation was also addressed. RAT selection algorithms allow for determining the gains obtained by using WiFi as a backup network for HSDPA. The proposed RAT selection algorithm is based on the load of each system, without the need for a complex management system. Simulation results show that, in such scenario, for high system loads, exploiting localization while applying load suitability optimization based algorithm, can provide a marginal gain of up to 450 kb/s in the goodput. HSDPA was also studied in the context of cognitive radio, by considering two co-located BSs operating at different frequencies (in the 2 and 5 GHz bands) in the same cell. The system automatically chooses the frequency to serve each user with an optimal General Multi-Band Scheduling (GMBS) algorithm. It was shown that enabling the access to a secondary band, by using the proposed Integrated CRRM (iCRRM), an almost constant gain near 30 % was obtained in the throughput with the proposed optimal solution, compared to a system where users are first allocated in one of the two bands and later not able to handover between the bands. In this context, future cognitive radio scenarios where IEEE 802.11e ad hoc modes will be essential for giving access to the mobile users have been proposed

PRACB: A Novel Channel Bonding Algorithm for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can utilize the unlicensed industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) band to communicate the sensed data. The ISM band has been already saturated due to overlaid deployment of WSNs. To solve this problem, WSNs have been powered up by cognitive radio (CR) capability. By using CR technique, WSNs can utilize the spectrum holes opportunistically. Channel bonding (CB) is a technique through which multiple contiguous channels can be combined to form a single wide band channel. By using channel bonding (CB) technique, CR based WSN nodes attempt to find and combine contiguous channels to avail larger bandwidth. In this paper, we show that probability of finding contiguous channels decreases with the increase in number of channels. Moreover, we propose two algorithms of primary radio (PR) activity based channel bonding schemes and compare with sample width algorithm (SWA). The simulation results show that our algorithm significantly avoids PR-CR harmful interference and CB in cognitive radio sensor networks (CRSNs) provides greater bandwidth to CR nodes