Beacon-enabled cognitive access for dynamic spectrum access

In dynamic spectrum access networks, the unused licensed spectrum used by primary users (PU) is opened to unlicensed secondary users (SU) for improving spectrum efficiency. We design a simple time-based threshold policy for collective protection of PUs, enabled by an out-of-band channel. In particular, multiple SUs may be widely distributed in a geographic location. The interference that collocated SUs cause to each other, termed self-interference, becomes a major source that may degrade the SUs communication performance. We establish an analytical framework for carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) based coexistence mechanisms when integrated into a family of time based threshold policies, and study its performance though theoretical analysis.