Load balancing for spectrum management in a cluster-based cognitive network

Cognitive radio technology has received increasing attention recently as a solution for the spectrum scarcity problem in wireless technology. It allows radios to intelligently locate free frequencies and use them efficiently. In our work, the unused spectrum is used to serve secondary users who do not have a license to access the spectrum. We propose a cluster-based architecture to form a secondary network. This network uses the licensed spectrum to overlay secondary users' traffic. Cluster heads group nodes to form distinct clusters and they manage spectrum in their clusters. In this paper, we investigate the performance of our spectrum management scheme. Simulation results show that load balanced clustering improve spectrum utilization and increase the throughput of the secondary network.