Effect of primary user traffic on sensing-throughput tradeoff for cognitive radios

The effect of the primary user traffic on the performance of the secondary network is investigated for the tradeoff between the sensing quality and the achievable throughput. Numerical results show that the actual secondary network performance when the random departure or arrival of the primary user is taken into account is worse than the predicted secondary network performance in the literature assuming constant occupancy state of the primary user. The degree of degradation depends on the traffic intensity as well as the received signal-to-noise ratio at the secondary user. Also, unlike the conventional model where the occupancy state of the primary user is assumed constant, the optimal sensing time in the new model varies for different primary channel conditions when the primary user traffic is considered. © 2011 IEEE.