Imitation-based spectrum access policy for CSMA/CA-based cognitive radio networks

In this paper, we tackle the problem of opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks where a number of unlicensed Secondary Users (SU) operating on the standard CSMA/CA protocol access a number of frequency channels partially occupied by licensed Primary Users (PU). We apply evolutionary game theory to model the spectrum access problem and derive distributed mechanisms to converge to the Nash equilibrium. To this end, we combine a payoff computation methodology, relying on the estimation on the number of SUs on the same channel, with the channel access policy derived by the evolutionary game model. The conducted numerical analysis shows that a fast convergence is achieved and the proposed mechanisms are robust against errors in payoff computation.