QoS-Aware Channel Sensing Scheduling in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio (CR) has been considered as the most prominent technique for flexible spectrum utilization. Protecting primary users (PUs) from any harmful interference is the most important issue in CR networks. Secondary users (SUs) periodically sense the channels in order to detect the PU's appearance. Without a proper sensing schedule, however, sensing operation may degrade the quality of service (QoS) of SUs. In this paper, we propose the channel sensing scheduling that protects PUs by sensing the channels with a proper sensing interval as well as maintains the QoS of SUs as possible. Channel sensing intervals required for protecting PUs and sensing cycle required for guaranteeing QoS of SUs are numerically formulated. We show that our proposal outperforms the consecutive channel sensing method in terms of delay and packet loss.