Data traffic-based analysis of delay and energy consumption in cognitive radio networks with and without resource reservation

SummaryA new opportunistic cross‐layer MAC protocol involving channel allocation and packet scheduling for cognitive radio networks is proposed. Cognitive radio allows secondary users (SUs) to exploit the available portions of the licensed spectrum bands without interfering with primary users. In particular, we consider a cognitive radio system, where SUs are equipped with two transceivers: a control transceiver and a software‐defined radio transceiver. Data traffic characteristics of SUs are considered to ameliorate system performance. So, we propose a mechanism of resource reservation to improve QoS requirements that favors successful SUs to transmit data during x time slots without interfering with primary users. The key novelty of this paper is giving priority for SUs with important data traffic and which frequently solicits data channels to transmit for the remaining time of the ongoing time slot and for the next time slots directly after checking the channel availability. We develop a new analytical model to evaluate delay parameter for two scenarios with and without resource reservation and we then investigate the impact of those scenarios on the energy consumption. We show through simulations that cognitive radio performances increase noticeably with the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The article proposes a new opportunistic cross‐layer media access control protocol involving channel allocation and packet scheduling for cognitive radio networks. We consider secondary user (SU) data traffic characteristics to design the resource reservation scheme in order to improve QoS requirements. We allow successful SU with important data traffic to reserve data channel during x time slots without interfering with the primary users. We develop an analytical model to evaluate delay and energy consumption, and we show that cognitive radio performances improve noticeably.