A Sensitive Secondary Users Selection Algorithm for Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks

Area of Science:

• Wireless Communications
• Network Engineering
• Energy Efficiency in Networks

Background:

• Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Networks (CRAHNs) allow Secondary Users (SUs) to utilize licensed spectrum opportunistically.
• Current CRAHN architectures require all SUs to have energy-intensive Cognitive Radios (CRs), increasing power consumption for battery-operated devices.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel architecture, Requirement-based CRAHN (RCRAHN), to enhance energy efficiency in CRAHNs.
• To minimize the number of Cognitive Radio Users (CRUs) required for spectrum sensing while maintaining network performance.

Main Methods:

• Formulated a non-linear programming problem to optimize CRU selection under energy efficiency and real-time constraints.
• Developed a heuristic algorithm, Sensitive Secondary Users Selection (SSUS), to find near-optimal solutions for the NP-hard problem.

Main Results:

• The SSUS algorithm significantly improves energy efficiency in RCRAHNs.
• SSUS achieves satisfactory performance in terms of end-to-end delay and communication reliability.

Conclusions:

• The proposed RCRAHN architecture and SSUS algorithm effectively enhance energy efficiency in CRAHNs.
• This approach balances the need for spectrum sensing with the critical requirement of conserving energy for SUs.