Spectrum access games for cognitive radio networks

Abstract

Cognitive Radio (CR) is seen as a key enabling technology for addressing current under-utilization and inefficient use of radio frequency spectrum. The use of CR will see most of the spectrum white spaces being used opportunistically without causing any interference to the licensed or primary users. CRs can collaborate in order to address the channel fading and hidden terminal problems that may be experienced by a single radio. For modeling and analysis of CR networks, the use of game theory has received a wide acceptance in next generation and intelligent wireless communication systems. In this paper the authors make use of game theory approach to model and analyze cognitive radio networks in order to allow dynamic spectrum access in broadband wireless access networks. They start by motivating the use of cooperative spectrum sensing to address the channel fading and hidden terminal problems. They show that using repeated games and the discount factor, players can fairly access the uplink available channel without causing interference to each other