Optimal scheduling in cooperate-to-join Cognitive Radio Networks

Optimal transmission scheduling in wireless cognitive networks is considered under the spectrum leasing model. We propose a cooperative scheme in which secondary nodes share the time slot with primary nodes in return for cooperation. Cooperation is feasible only if the system's performance is improved over the non-cooperative case. First, we investigate a scenario where secondary users are interested in immediate rewards. Then, we formulate another problem where the secondary users are guaranteed a portion of the primary utility, on a long term basis, in return for cooperation. In both scenarios, our proposed schemes are shown to outperform non-cooperative scheduling schemes, in terms of both individual and total expected utility, for a given set of feasible constraints. Based on Lyapunov Optimization techniques, we show that our schemes are arbitrarily close to the optimal performance at the price of reduced convergence rate.