Performance Evaluation of a CR-Based WRAN System using Spectrum Utilization Efficiency

A cognitive radio system is one of promising solutions that can relieve the spectrum shortage problem by using spectrum overlay sharing. The performance of a cognitive radio system can be evaluated by the spectral utilization efficiency. Considering net system coverage, we propose area efficiency in order to measure the spectrum utilization efficiency of a CR- based wireless regional area network (WRAN) system over TV bands. Based on a coexistence scenario between WRAN and DTV systems, we evaluate area efficiency and compare it with the conventional ones such as spectral/coverage efficiency. From simulation results it is observed that area efficiency is more useful than spectral/coverage efficiency under spectrum sharing environment such as the number of available frequency bands and the available amount of given geographical area.